Scripture to think about: “Where there is no vision, the people perish, but blessed is he who keeps the law.” –Proverbs 29:18
We recently whizzed past St. Patrick’s Day as the emergencies of the Covid-19 descended upon the world. But there’s a message in an ancient Irish hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” that we shouldn’t miss. No, St. Patrick didn’t write it. He lived three or four centuries before it is believed to have been written. But we might consider it a part of his long-term legacy.
Early in human history, Ireland was believed to have been settled by people from the European mainland. Four hundred years before Christ, Celtic tribes from Great Britain and Europe invaded Ireland and set up small kingdoms. About this time, over in what’s now called Scotland, a baby boy was born into a religious family and named Patrick. His father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest.
When he was about 16, raiders invaded his town and burned his home. He fled to the countryside, but one of the pirates spotted him hiding in the bushes, seized him and hauled him aboard ship to take him back to Ireland as a slave. In that dark time, he gave his life to Christ. Eventually he escaped Ireland and studied in France for the priesthood. Then one night he had a dream that was much like that which the apostle Paul had in his call to evangelize in Macedonia. In Patrick’s case, an Irishman in this dream pleaded with him to come evangelize Ireland.
Irish monasteries flourished after his death, resulting in many hymns, prayers, sermons and worship songs. Irish missionaries labored from Scotland to Switzerland. One was Columba of County Donegal, best known as a poet of the Irish church. Not long after Columba’s lifetime, an anonymous Irishman wrote a prayer-poem asking God to be his vision, wisdom, and best thought by day or by night.
Jump forward more than a thousand years, to 1905, when a scholar in Dublin translated this Irish poem into English. Then another scholar, in England, took that translation and crafted it into a poem with rhyme and meter. It was matched to an Irish folk song from an area in Ireland where Patrick had preached to the Druids.
And so we have this hymn of worship with its almost lilting melody. Who would have thought it would come into the heritage of hymns via a route that involved pirates and slavery, a vision to evangelize the Emerald Isle, and the enduring message of redemption in Jesus Christ?
Note in the lyrics the phrases of adoration: “Lord of my heart,” “my best thought, “my Wisdom,” “my true Word,” “my great Father,” “mine inheritance,” “My Treasure,” and “Heart of my own heart.”
In this time of uncertainty and fear, consider using those phrases as you pray for a world that’s physically and spiritually at risk. And remember, when Jesus is our vision, He enables us to hope beyond all this.
