HYMN FOR THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT As After the Waterbrooks Panteth/I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say
- Gracia Grindal
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Text: Nicolaj Fredrik Severin Grundtvig (1783-1872) Tune: Ludvig Lindemann (1812-1887)
1. As after the waterbrooks panteth
The hart when it sinks in the chase,
So thirsteth. My soul, as it fainteth,
For Thee, O my God, and Thy grace;
For Thou art the fount ever living,
Who unto the thirsty art giving
The water of life that I need.
2. Why art thou disquiet within me?
Why art thou cast down, O my soul?
Confide in thy God, let Him win thee!
Still hope in thy God, Him extol!
For surely once dawneth a morrow,
When, freed from thy care and thy sorrow,
Thou praises shalt sing to thy God.
3. His light and his truth, they shall lead me
In peace to his temple at last;
I rest on his word, He will speed me,
And conflict and sorrow are past;
Yes, joyful I anthems will raise Him,
With heart and with voice will I praise Him—
My heart and my life and my God!
Tr. Carl Døving
REFLECTION
Thirsting after righteousness is one of the marks the Bible uses for those seeking God. Psalm 42 is one of the golden psalms that expresses the image of thirsting for God beautifully. Jesus blesses with a beatitude those who are thirsty after righteousness. The Samaritan woman discovers her thirst in her long discourse with Jesus at Jacob’s well. It is one of the great accounts of Jesus interacting with a person in Scripture.
In the psalm the thirst for God is caused by memory, remembering a time when the psalmist was drinking from the fountain and receiving the water of life. What interests me just now is what is means that God is a spirit, what Jesus tells the Samaritan women toward the end of their conversation.
Today as I was sitting in church in a kind of holy daydreaming trance, it struck me how common it is to think of Spirit as invisible and unseen and therefore like nothing. This is Gnosticism pure and simple. Ghosts do not breathe and are not filled with breath. But like our air, the breath of God, is life. Without God’s breath, Adam is just dust.
My father once marveled to a airline pilot how planes could rise up on nothing. The pilot retorted that the air we breath is something, it envelops us and from it we receive life. It is enough to hold up huge planes.
So it is with the Spirit of God. To those who believe, it is all around us giving us life. In this encounter Jesus says I AM The Living Water, I AM of course his claim that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob whom Moses met on Mt. Sinai. We drink from him and receive the Spirit, like the water. Now, Jesus says, we worship God in Spirit and Truth. This truth is not ideas we believe, it is the Spirit that inhabits us fully, like the water we drink and the air we breathe, it goes to every call in our bodies. Which is why Paul can say For me to live is Christ. When we believe in him, he dwells in us and he is our life. No wonder we grow thirsty when the water of life, the spirit of God, is kept from us. Give me some of that water, she says. So should we.
HYMN INFO
Grundtvig wrote this early in his career, 1812. It was not a hymn but a poem that he later worked into a hymn. Ludvig Lindemann, the great Norwegian church composer of the 19th century, wrote a tune for it when he was setting texts in the Landstad hymnal. The hymn with the Lindeman tune has lasted in Norway. There is a Danish tune by Oluf Ring (1884-1946) in Denmark, but neither was taken up in the Service Book and Hymnal because of its archaic translation. One can see from the variety of versions of it on Youtube that it is still known and sung in Denmark and Norway. Carl Døving's translation needs updating, but it gets the meaning right.
For those that want a more familiar hymn try I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say. It refers directly to the John text.
For another take on the lesson, one of my own favorites, Lord, I am Thirty, with a lovely tune by Dan Damon is attached.
LINKS
Ring's Danish tune stanzas 6-7
Lindemann tune/Norwegian choir
Organ plays Lindemann tune
Iver Kleive, Poul Disse and Knut Reiersrud
Anne-Lise Berntsen and Nils Henrik Asheim/Norsk folk tune/
Enjoy this lovely tune Daniel Charles Damon for my text on the Samaritan woman
There are two modern translations of the Grundtvig text. The Danish Lutheran Church of Vancouver, B.C., produced the hymnal “Grant me, God, the Gift of Singing.” This hymn is found in a translation by Pastor Rassmussen. I do not have it at hand. Edward Broadbridge, in “Living Well-Springs.” Does not follow rhyme scheme, stanza one quoted here.
The deer in her running grows thirsty and longs for a fresh water spring; just so is my thirsty soul yearning, O Lord, for the water you bring. For you are the spring that is living, and I will drink all you are giving and never be thirsty again. Neither of these two translations are fully satisfactory, although it might be possible to make a composite with Døving.