Romans 8: 38 – 39
LSB 713 “From God can nothing move me “ is the
Hymn of the Day for tomorrow.
It is set to the tune VON GOTT WILL ICH NICHT LASSEN. This is
probably the most well-known hymn of Ludwig Helmbold, a German philosophy
professor and poet of Lutheran hymns. It was written for friends fleeing the
1563 plague in Erfurt to comfort them on their journey. Johann Sebastian Bach
used several of Helmbold’s hymn texts in his cantatas, and stanza five of Von
Gott Will Ich Nicht Lassen appears in Bach’s O heilges Geist-und Wasserbad (O
holy bath of Spirit and Water).
Stanza Three
The Lord my life arranges;
Who can His work destroy?
In His good time He changes
All sorrow into joy.
So let me then be still:
My body, soul, and spirit
His tender care inherit
According to His will.
The Lord my life arranges;
Who can His work destroy?
In His good time He changes
All sorrow into joy.
So let me then be still:
My body, soul, and spirit
His tender care inherit
According to His will.
How does God come to our bodies, our souls, and our spirits? He sends us His Son, Jesus Christ. How does Jesus come to us? He feeds us both with the bread of earth, in response to our prayer “Give us this day our daily bread,” and with the bread of heaven, when we receive His body as He bids us to “Take, eat” at His altar in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
This is the gracious will of God: that He would impart to us every gift through His Son so that we may receive the great treasures of eternal life. It pleases Him to do this, too, and though we may grow weary in our devotion to Him and our service to others, He never grows weary in coming to us, exactly how He says He will. What great kindness our Lord shows to us!
Stanza Five
Praise God with acclamation
And in His gifts rejoice.
Each day finds its vocation
Responding to His voice.
Soon years on earth are past;
But time we spend expressing
The love of God brings blessing
That will forever last!
How are we to respond to these great gifts? We shall praise God and rejoice in His kindness! Just as He continues to come to us daily, exactly where He promises to be, we daily find our response and our purpose in Him, following His voice as He reveals it to us in Holy Scripture.
And though we know our earthly days are limited, our Christian vocation is everlasting. We are freed in Christ to express the love of God in service to our neighbor and in acclamation we return to heaven. Those blessings Christ gives to us; and the blessings Christ gives to His people through His gifts and through us, His servants, are everlasting—even beyond the tomb of earthly death.
Stanza Seven
For thus the Father willed it,
Who fashioned us from clay;
And His own Son fulfilled it
And brought eternal day.
The Spirit now has come,
To us true faith has given;
He leads us home to heaven.
O praise the Three in One!
This life of the Christian—this life of deliverance from sin, of comfort in forgiveness, of receiving the gifts of God, and of freedom in Christ—is made possible by the will of God the Father. At the moment man ruined God's sinless and perfect creation, the Father promised His Son, Jesus, to restore corrupt human nature to its incorruptible design. Christ indeed fulfilled this perfect plan of salvation for us on the cross.
Even now, two thousand years after Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, the power of the Holy Spirit brings life and salvation to us, planting and nurturing our faith—given to us in Baptism—until we are called home to heaven. The work of the triune God in the life of the Christian deserves all thanks and praise. For indeed, nothing can move us from God, our heavenly Father.[1] -23 October, 2021
[1] The Christ, copyright © Ed Riojas, Higher Things
[2] https://blog.cph.org/worship/hymn-of-the-month-from-god-can-nothing-move-me
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