Hosannas for the Weary: Five Hymns of Hope When Your Heart Feels Heavyഉദാഹരണം

There Is a Hope

Stuart Townend is a British lyricist, composer, worship leader, and performer. His contribution to modern hymnody includes “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us,” “The Power of the Cross,” and “In Christ Alone.” Some have compared him to Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. In June of 2017, the Archbishop of Canterbury awarded him the Thomas Cranmer Award for Worship “for his outstanding contribution to contemporary worship music.” He collaborated with his good friend Mark Edwards in writing this song. Mark Edwards is a British jazz pianist and producer.

In his “Story Behind the Song,” Stuart Townend writes,

I’d been wanting to explore the theme of hope for a while; . . . I’m not sure we’re always aware of exactly what Christian hope is, and how it differs from the other hopes in our lives. . . . We hope to arrive at a certain place, to achieve certain goals . . . we all hope the best for other people. . . . These [are] great things to hope and pray for, but they remain hopes precisely because we never know for certain whether they will be fulfilled or not. They are tinged with uncertainty.

Christian hope, however, is very different. When the Bible talks about hope, it talks about something that is certain, and can perhaps be broken down into two different certainties. The first is that no matter where we go and what we do in life, God will be with us and love us. The second is that when this life is over, we will not perish but will spend eternity at home with Christ. These certainties remain “hopes” not because they may or may not come to fruition, but because they haven’t been fully realized yet. . . . These certain hopes put everything in our lives into perspective, and we can live by faith on the solid and certain hope that Christ gives us.

“This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil.” (Heb. 6:19 NASB)

As you sing this hymn. . . notice the final word of each stanza, home. Townend focuses on that word to define the hope he described above. This hope leads us home! Home to His will. Home in His everlasting arms. Home where there is unspeakable joy. Truly home! In the loss of a Christian loved one in Christ, they too are, even now, in His safe and loving arms. They are home!

At age 93, Billy Graham wrote his last book Nearing Home. He used the analogy of baseball: “I often pictured myself hitting a big-league grand slam into the stadium seats and hearing the crowd roar with thunder as I ran the bases—nearing home. I sense God’s Spirit with me today, and most comforting is the knowledge that He will not forsake me during this last stretch as I am nearing home. If that doesn’t give me a sense of hope, nothing else will.