HYMN FOR EASTER 6 and Mother's Day Proverbs 31

Gracia Grindal
2 days ago
4 min read

Updated: 1 hour ago

The Prophetess Anna (Rembrandt's Mother). Rembrandt 1631

Text: Proverbs 31, paraphrase by Gracia Grindal. Tune: O dass ich tausend Zunge hätte Johan B. König (1691-1758)

Her children rise and call her blessed

Her husband’s heart is filled with praise.

She gives them life, with love confesses

Her failures, thanking God for grace.

She helps her children, does them good,

Her table rich with tasty food.

She buys a house and tends the garden

And raises produce with her hands.

She garners profits from her ventures

Gives alms to those who need a friend.

And she is clothed in dignity,

Warm laughter fills her mouth with glee.

Her words are patient, filled with wisdom,

In all she says she would be kind.

She shares a good name with her husband

He sees her keen and steady mind.

Her heart rejoices in the Lord,

She daily lives within his word.

When hardships come, her God she blesses,

As evening falls and beauty fades,

She prays to be all she professes

For on the Lord she daily waits.

She is more precious than bright gems,

Her faith her shining diadem.

REFLECTION

Love is the subject of this Sunday’s text from John in Jesus’ last discourses. This Sunday is also Mother’s Day when we celebrate mothers, also about love. The celebration makes some women uneasy—the ideal mother is not easy to be, some, like me, are not mothers, others had a bad abusive mother. Still, the ideal of motherhood is worth honoring as we are instructed to do in the Commandments, Honor your father and mother…. Just because we can't meet the ideal, does not mean we should not celebrate and hope to come nearer the ideal in our own lives, even as we celebrate those who have come close, rather than resent that we are not like an ideal mother.

Proverbs 31 lovingly describes such a woman who is worth our admiration. Solomon portrays her as a faithful woman aware of her faults, and always looking to be faithful. Whatever her faults, she prays to overcome them and do better. As a wife, mother and businesswomen, she is diligent.

Many young women today are delaying the roles of wife and mother, wanting to be successful in their vocations, which often delays bearing children beyond what nature allows. The statistics show it doesn’t seem to have made them happier. Many women who have thought a child would be a burden report on holding their first child that it has changed them and taught them that submission to the flesh is not a burden, but a blessing. As Jesus says, to find life we must lose it.

We can compare the love of God to a mother’s love, something Scripture does in Isaiah 49:15, can a mother forget her child? Or Jesus comparing himself to a mother hen brooding over her children, like the Spirit at the beginning of Genesis brooding over the waters. More common is the image of God as a groom wooing his bride through all of Scripture, making us brides of Christ. These are comparisons, not names. As people of flesh we need analogies, metaphor and similes of what we know to compare to something we cannot comprehend, but need for purposes of our faith. Using our most intimate relationships to compare our relationship to God is poetry which reveals meanings to us rational speech cannot. But still our images and metaphors are weak tea next to the love we receive from God who gave his Son to die for us so that we might be friends with God, who is love itself, and has gone to every length to dwell with us and befriend us.

And in creating us as flesh and blood, fashioning us for the making of families, he has given us abiding love in the flesh, he has even set the solitary in families so they can be be tended and nourished by people who care for them. I, as a single woman, living with my nephew and his family, rejoice in this rich benefit as I close out my days here on earth.

HYMN INFO

Chris Fenner of the Hymnological Archives asked me last year if I had a hymn on Proverbs 31. I said no, but I could write one. With his help, I came up with this text, something of a paraphrase of Proverbs 31, a wonderful text praising a faithful wife and mother. Fenn was working on a daily devotional using a hymn and meditation on it for every day of the year Hymns and Devotions for Daily Worship. It can be purchased as a book or an ebook on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Hymns-Devotions-Daily-Worship-Fenner-ebook/dp/B0DKZMYMK7.

It is a big beautiful book and well worth meditating on and singing the many hymns in it. A treasury indeed.

König, the tune writer, was a Lutheran composer from Frankfurt who sang in the choir directed by George Philip Telemann, He wrote many churchly works, among them Harmonischer Liederschatz, with 1,913 melodies, in 1738. He was a contemporary of Freylinghausen, the compiler of the great pietist hymnal, Geistreiches Gesangbuch 1704. Several of his tunes have lasted until this day. This tune was for the German hymn that resembles Charles Wesley’s O That I had a thousand tongues. See below for the tune with the original German text.

LINKS

O Dass ich tausend Zunge hätte

https://youtu.be/cD52PA6uCwQ?si=0XVjy_r5Ra-KEILB

DetlefKorsen

https://youtu.be/EV5rlHuPJ2g?si=Z3rJgn55Z5Fo7xw8

Chen Reiss/ Felix Mendelssohn version

https://youtu.be/TiWwH5djlXY?si=B_LURUP4AI99LaNf