In my exposure to classic hymns of the faith, I’ve realized that quite a number reference rivers. This isn’t surprising, considering how the Bible highlights two rivers in Eden, the Jordan in the Promised Land, and the River of Life in Heaven.
I recalled the rest of that hymn’s opening verse: “....perfect peace, perfect yet it floweth, fuller every day, perfect yet it groweth, deeper all the way.” We’d driven to this valley because things were not very “perfect” at home. Widespread forest fires, set by lightning a month earlier, had shrouded our valley in smoke deemed very hazardous to people in “sensitive groups.” That included me, an asthmatic. Even to go out to the mailbox, I used an industrial particulate mask. For health, we just had to get away. And so we found our way to this remote valley and lovely river.
Often back at home, on sunny days, we’ll walk a trail adjacent to our own Columbia River. At such times, snatches of these old hymns come to me with their metaphors of how God’s wisdom and love are deeper and fuller.
I find stories behind hymns fascinating, and here are some of those for “river” hymns.
“Like a river glorious” was penned by Miss Frances Havergal, a prolific lyricist and devotional writer despite fragile health. Complications from a cold once left her so ill that doctors thought she’d die--this being before the discovery of antibiotics. Instead of fretting, she told her friends, “If I am really going, it is too good to be true.” This hymn, written after her recovery, was among more than 80 from her pen, including “Take My Life and Let it Be,” and “Who Is on the Lord’s Side?”
Early American slaves, who strongly identified with Bible stories of Israel’s enslavement in Egypt, longed for their own journey to freedom across a political Jordan. They gave us “Deep River” and “I’ve got peace like a river” (which cites Isaiah 48:18).
Horatio Spafford used that phase in a hymn written after his four daughters perished when their ship went down. Only his wife survived. “When peace like a river” opens the hymn best known for its lines, “It is well, it is well with my soul.”
Eighteenth century English preacher Samuel Stennett was also inspired by “Jordan’s strormy banks,” seeing it as a symbol of passing to heaven. Although the Israelites’ entrance into the Promised Land only meant more warfare to conquer it—and there will be no conflict in Heaven—many still are comforted by this sense of finally “coming home.” Who of us doesn’t yearn for, as his hymn expresses it, “that happy place...when I shall see my Father’s face”?
Welsh preacher William Williams, who traveled an estimated 100,000 miles on foot and horseback in the mid-1700s, wrote an estimated 800 hymns for his people. One of the few translated from Welsh, “Guide me, O Thou Great Jehovah,” has a concluding stanza that begins, “When I tread the verge of Jordan,” and addresses fears of death before landing “safe on Canaan’s side.”
Robert Lowry, a professor of literature, editor and pastor of several large Baptist churches, was inspired by Heaven’s river of life, “clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God” (Rev. 22:1-2). The words and tune to “Shall We Gather at the River” came to him one hot July afternoon in 1864 as he rested and had visions of Heaven. Some of his other 500 hymns include “I Need Thee Every Hour” and “Low in the Grave He Lay.”
I know there are other hymns that allude to rivers. They remind us that God often speaks in metaphors from nature to help us understand His attributes and ways. Even a body of water, laden with silt and home to fish, all of which He created, speak of Him.
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