"Abide with me"

“Abide with me”

The first words in a song by Scottish Anglican cleric Henry Francis Lyle and sung by Audrey Assad.  The full impact of such truth lies in the taste of seeking the love of Christ that only can come when we are hurting, alone, and desperate for that something that oftentimes alludes us.

When we awaken in the morning after a night of slipping away from the grace-filled day of peacefulness in the Holy Spirit, there is a feeling of guilt that confronts our very being.  It certainly is a reminder to each of us that we are sinners in need of God’s gentle hands upon our weakness.  Sin does not make anyone of us an evil person.  God did not create evil or anything that even represents that unwanted entity that is just the absence of goodness.  Watch the storm clouds as they threaten a day of sunshine and we say when the sun gets covered by these signs of bad weather, it is because of the absence of the sun and not the presence of something bad.  

So it is with what we may call evil when only goodness has appeared to vanish.  That is when the attractions of our own weaknesses seem to find a way into our lives and laughs when we attempt to throw these temptations away from us, and the permanence of our weak humanity takes over.  Notice the final verse at the conclusion of each stanza says; :”Abide with me.”

“Our age is an age of fornication and adultery.  Every country is filled with immorality.  Concerning this matter, so many have been drugged by garlic and have lost their sense concerning this sin.”  Part of a text by Maurice Ward.  This places our sins in an open forum that should confront each of us on a daily basis.  We are not evil people, but the tenets of its hold on any of us has a grip that is like a leech that won’t let go.  It can suck out an energy that is unable to control it’s attractions.  

Here we know that there is only one path that any of us can find that will separate our need for pleasure or wealth at the expense of others are the words of, “Abide with me.”  These are not mere words that sound great as a poietic prayer, they are the sense of our knowledge of Christ is the only medicine to correct our failure of weakness that although is promised as power being made perfect in weakness (2 Cor 12: 9),  we still need that spiritual confession of the grace of Christ in that weakness.

If I am reminded of my weakness each day, to what does my God-given grace assist me from the night before?  “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is the gift of God.”  (Eph 2: 8).  

Do not sing Abide with me and then disbelieve his grace is an assurance of his love to each of us.  Remember that God’s love is 100 % for each man and woman.  Otherwise Jesus would not have given himself over to evil men’s intentions by crucifying him.  This was the final chapter of overcoming eternal death when he said, “it is finished,”  (Jn 19: 30).  The Passion was the last chapter of God’s love that opened the newest narrative by raising Christ from the tomb and welcoming all of his believers into paradise.  

Ralph B. Hathaway