A song for a day with two funerals

Formidable

Our oldest Church member died recently.  The word most of us could agree well-described her was the word formidable.

You don't get to live to 102 years old without having some determination, and Evelyn had plenty of that.  And then some.  Even at a century old she was still, well, formidable.

Which brings me to Melville Beveridge Cox.

On the face of it he was decidedly not formidable.  He set out as a preacher in New England in 1822 before contracting tuberculosis.  You don't usually live to 100 after having TB.  He gave up preaching .

He moved and began working in a bookstore.  He edited a weekly Christian magazine.  He married.  That might be calculated to turn a sickly man into something a little stronger.  He and Ellen had a baby daughter, but not long after her birth both Ellen and the baby died of cholera.

The weakly widower volunteered for missionary work in South America.  This was refused but instead he was assigned to Liberia, the African state being formed from freed slaves.  There were doubts that this not-at-all formidable man would last long in Africa.

He began as quickly as he could with a church and two mission stations further up the river.  By now he had malaria, and 15 weeks into Africa he was dead.

This story of hopeless weakness is formidable too, however.  His story had so inspired other, stronger people that even as he died five further missionaries were en route to take up and expand his work.

In truth, all human formidability is to be found in God alone.

Home

Tonight at Church I quoted an amazing hymn which I have never heard sung live but which resonates with the way some of us will get to heaven.

Safe home, safe home in port!

Rent cordage, shattered deck,

Torn sails, provisions short,

And only not a wreck;

But oh! the joy upon the shore

To tell our voyage perils o’er!

The prize, the prize secure!

The athlete nearly fell;

Bare all he could endure,

And bare not always well;

But he may smile at troubles gone

Who sets the victor-garland on.

No more the foe can harm;

No more of leaguered camp,

And cry of night alarm,

And need of ready lamp;

And yet how nearly he had failed

How nearly had that foe prevailed!

The exile is at home!

O nights and days of tears,

O longings not to roam,

O sins and doubts and fears;

What matters now grief’s darkest day?

The King has wiped those tears away

I was astonished to find it even has a contemporary version on youtube! It is hard to imagine a longer journey for a hymn than from Joseph of the Studium to Monks Coffee House Music Venue in Abilene, but here we go . . .