Abide With Love: Our Savior's Care

Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens. Lord, with me abide!

This reverent hymn, sung by Christian denominations worldwide, pleads with God to abide— remain with us—throughout our difficulties and challenges. The first verse continues,

When other helpers fail and comforts flee,

Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.

Helpless can be heartbreaking, but when we abide with the Lord we can receive the deep, reassuring, comforting  help we need. As Christian authors, we love hymns, and we treasure those that bond us as Christians: 7-day, once-a-week, or any others who love and worship our Savior.

Abide Through the Darkness

Henry F. Lyte knew he was nearing death as he wrote this hymn. “Helpless” in the grip of tuberculosis, he longed for God to abide with him until the end. After a lifetime of poor health, he gave his final sermon at age 54, wrote the hymn shortly afterward, and asked that it be sung at his funeral. He died a few months later, and the hymn was sung to his own tune. God did not “fail” or “flee” from him. A clergyman attending at his death reported his last words: “Peace! Joy!”

Christian authors refer to the abiding relationship with words like continuing, interdependent, personal and intimate, along with mutual, focused, and intentional. Writing on the Christian Website “Open the Bible,” Erik Reed pointed out,

To abide is a verb. It is active. Abiding in Christ is not a feeling or a belief, but something we do. It means to “remain” or “stay” and entails far more than the idea of continued belief in the Savior.

Reed calls this state “a life-giving, soul-thrilling, joy-producing communion with God through Christ,” in which we live “dependent upon the Holy Spirit to bring us closer to Christ.”

In discussing Christ’s invitation to abide with Him, Christian authors generally refer to His teaching of the vine and the branches,

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. (John 15:4-5)

Abide During Change

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day.

Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away.

Change and decay in all around I see;

O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Change and decay are all around us.

Changing Nature

In the last few years nature has been the source of worldwide tragedy, heartache, and fear. Earthquakes destroy lands, homes, buildings, lifestyles, and employment, in addition to tragic loss of life. Rising waters cause disastrous flooding. Rising temperatures cause record-breaking heat. Many countries suffer severe drought.

Storms include cyclones, tornadoes, hurricanes, hail and other ice storms, and a new addition known as “whirling supercell.”  Weather scientists, who predict such things, refer to a swatch of the U.S. as “tornado alley” (Scientific American). Wildfires are rampant; newscasts use the term “fire weather” (CBS News) for natural conditions that explode into flames.

The American Psychiatric Association reports that single local disasters may cause “high-risk coping behavior such as increased alcohol use, and mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.” However, conditions like floods and major droughts have more serious mental health effects: more dangerous levels of anxiety, deeper depression, and suicide, in addition, to post-traumatic stress disorders. We have critical needs to abide with God.

Decaying Societies and Cultures

Changes with decay affect our world, our cultures, and our life circumstances daily.

The British equivalent of Christianity.com has warned that suffering, which is a “consequence” of  “our decision to disobey [God],” includes “wars, violence, racism, abuse, corruption and a thousand other evils.” Wars, happening and threatening, are constantly before us on media. We must abide with God as we cope with violence that invades our schools, our streets, our social and recreational events, and even our celebratory parades and our grocery stores.

“Got Questions,” a site offering biblical answers to Christian questions, commented on the challenge for Christians of  living with the “ideals” and the “lies” surrounding us today. But the author assured that readers can find safety and reliability as they follow God’s teachings.

Unchanging God

God can adjust circumstances, and He can bless us in more ways that we can possibly imagine. His attributes and His love will never change. As He told apostate Israel through Malachi (3:6), “I am the Lord, and I do not change.”

Scriptural testimonies are many and varied. In early Christian times, Paul reminded the Hebrews (13:8), “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Discussing God’s perfect gifts, James (1:17) wrote of  “the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Knowing he would soon leave the ever-changing and decaying world, Henry Lyte pleaded in his hymn text for God “who changest not” to abide with him. When we sing this song in faith, we share that we, like Lyte, trust in His unchanging love and care.

Trust in His Care

I need Thy presence every passing hour;

What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's pow'r?

Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?

Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

Power of the Tempter

In calling for grace to “foil” the power of temptation, the author, a lifelong clergyman, might have been recalling 1 Corinthians 10:13, a scripture he must have quoted often. Paul assured that God “will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear” and that when temptation comes, He will “also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it.” The tempter is foiled or defeated by the power of God’s protection, as He either turns temptation away or turns up our strength to cope with it.

Solomon warned in Proverbs (4:14-15), “Enter not into the path of the wicked. . . . Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away.” Quoting this scripture, a popular Christian speaker suggested to a large university audience that they contrast David, who experienced temptation and was destroyed by it, to Joseph, who ran away at speed when his employer’s wife attempted to tempt him. The speaker urged listeners to recall the “avoidance mentality” of Christ when the tempter went after Him: “Get thee behind me.”

We know that Christ may foil temptation by “mak[ing] a way to escape.” As we abide with Him, we can receive the strength as well as help necessary to overcome the tempter’s  power.

Strength of Guide and Stay

J.C. Ryle, an influential English writer and church leader of the 19th century, taught of blessings when we abide.

To abide in Christ means to keep up a habit of constant close communion with Him—to be always leaning on Him, resting on Him, pouring out our hearts to Him, and using Him as our Fountain of life and strength, as our chief Companion and best Friend. To have His words abiding in us, is to keep His sayings and precepts continually before our memories and minds, and to make them the guide of our actions and the rule of our daily conduct and behavior. (emphasis added)

In Christian literature, especially hymns, we often find the phrase “guide and stay” expressing this relationship with God. Ryle described God’s abiding and guiding blessings. “Stay,” used as a noun, refers to indefinite time remaining in a place. Saying that God is “our stay” refers to infinite time—a lifetime of the presence of the Holy Spirit and its guidance as God blesses us with His love.

We must choose this relationship and make efforts to maintain it. Christ told His disciples, “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32). If we want God’s guidance with the continual presence of His spirit, we must study the words of the Bible and keep them in our hearts.

Brian Hedges, author of three books on issues of active Christianity, wrote on Christianity.com  that we should be “keeping the words of Jesus in our hearts and minds so that they renew and revive us, shape and sanctify us, filling and form[ing] us and . . . keeping ourselves in his infinite . . . love.” He concluded, “We abide in Jesus by letting his words abide in us and by abiding in his love.”

Abide in Peace

Dieter F. Uchtdorf, an international Christian leader, urged us, to “move forward with faith, courage, determination, and trust in God as we approach the challenges and opportunities ahead,”  reminding us that “we do not walk the path of discipleship alone.”  He quoted the promise of Deuteronomy 31:6: “The Lord thy God . . . doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.”

The hymn “Abide With Me” specifies “through cloud and sunshine.” The author knew from his own experiences and those of parishioners he served that all will have both. Worldwide Christian leader and author Jeffrey R. Holland noted that we abide with “conviction” along with  “endurance,” in “good times and bad.”

Dieter Uchtdorf might have answered the anxiety expressed throughout the hymn —darkness, change, and trust—with this statement of faith: “Christ’s perfect love allows us to walk with humility, dignity, and a bold confidence as followers of our beloved Savior. Christ’s perfect love gives us the confidence to press through our fears and place our complete trust in [His] power and goodness.”