A feature on a hymn of the faith
A bright yellow rose brings its sunny cheer every spring to my front-yard rose garden. At one time, a stake by each rose gave the floral name. This one is now “stakeless,” but I recall it as named “Oregold.” It's the sunshine bush of the “patch,” and my floral reminder of the “Sun of My Soul,” the Lord Jesus Christ.
Yes, there's a hymn of that name, and it goes way, way back to the late 1700s. The lyrics are credited to an English curate and scholar named John Keble (1792-1866). He didn't have all the scientific information we do about the sun. But he had a heart for God as well as a stout Anglican upbringing. He also knew his Bible, drawing the text for his most famous hymn from this prophecy of a Messiah:
But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings. (Malachi 4:2)
Keble, son of a vicar, became one himself after his education at Oxford where he excelled academically. Loyal to his birth family, he turned down clerical promotions to serve in a small parish, taking care of his widowed father and sisters. He also was part of the “Oxford Movement,” which sought to return the Anglican church to its historical liturgical roots, in contrast to the Wesleyan “holiness” emphasis of that time. That's a very brief summary of his life; that in the online Wikipedia goes on and on (3,000 words plus charts).
In singing this song, my mind goes to the gleaming, blinding globe of the sky that we call “the sun.” I cannot even imagine its role in creation, except to trust in a God whose power is so great it is beyond human understanding. The entry for “sun” in the World Book encyclopedia (which supposedly condenses things down) goes on for 13 pages. All that technical information just scratches the surface, And then come the “sun” analogies in language and literature embracing its size, fury and sustaining power for life on earth. Keble tapped into that image in this hymn, one of many hymn texts attributed to him. (One resource said he wrote 56 hymns, another connected him to 765 hymn texts.) This hymn would eventually be included in more than 1,200 hymn compilations in several languages.
Despite his brilliance and credentials as a preacher and scholar, Keble was a modest man who published his hymn texts anonymously. Their royalties helped him pay the bills for the small village church where he served for more than three decades. He died at about 74 in 1866; his wife survived him by six weeks. They are buried side-by-side in churchyard at Hursley (about ten miles north of Southampton in England), his longtime parish.
In this classic “YouTube” rendition (a recording of hymns of 100 years or older), George Beverly Shea narrates and sings:
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