What do you call a guy who’s 40-something, unemployed, and alone? A professional and relational failure? Maybe he sensed what others might be saying, because Paul Gerhardt’s words in “Give to the Winds Your Fears” suggest he had an acute familiarity with the therapy for anxiety in the face of a postponed life. He learned during his education to use hymns to teach and minister to believers…so what was he trying to teach and admonish believers in this song? Was Gerhardt suggesting that we merely cast off anxious thoughts as if they are but vapors, easily transported away by the wind? Would doing so make me stride more confidently, as the trees bend and a breeze captures my problems (like the fellow in the picture ‘Wind’, a 14th Century masterpiece by an unknown painter)? It does seem Gerhardt wanted me to think of my troubles as trivial, compared to the Almighty’s hand. ‘Hope springs eternal’ his hymn words suggest. He needed this hope, not just in his 40’s, but closer to the end of his life when his wife died, he had the comfort of only one of five surviving children, and he again struggled to secure consistent employment.
What fears had touched Gerhardt that caused him to minister to himself with this hymn at the time it was written? He had endured the Thirty Years War (in what is today Germany), a trial that initially derailed his vocational life’s beginning in the mid-17th Century. And, he did not marry until 47 years old, and only after obtaining his first position. He must’ve wondered if life would ever start, or if he’d just be in neutral interminably. After all, even by 21st Century standards, 40-something is kinda past halfway for most of us. A biography of Gerhardt’s life tells us that he composed the song during a time when he was most prolific as a hymnwriter, in the 1650s when he was a pastor at Mittenwalde (near Berlin). The year 1651 marked his first posting in ministry, so one might think he was still feeling challenged and anxious, wanting to impress his employer early on in ministry in 1653 when the hymn was written. That’s how I might have felt. He’d been waiting for an appointment for some time (nine years), since his graduation from the University of Wittenberg in 1642. Was his sense of angst amplified – ‘Lord, don’t let me mess this up after I’ve waited for so long!’? If it was, he had discovered how to respond, throwing his troubles in the Lord’s direction, at least according to the words he wrote.
What happened in Gerhardt’s ‘in between’ time, from 1642-1651, is enlightening. He didn’t mope or vegetate because his occupational wheels were spinning. His future and his legacy as one of the great German hymnists really began then. As a tutor in Berlin (while he waited for a real job, you might say), his poetry and hymn-writing captured the attention of someone important. Johann Crueger (someone with one of those real jobs) was a musician and professional worshipper at a church there. A lifelong musical collaboration had begun. And, while tutoring in a family, Gerhardt met his future wife Anna Maria. It seems Gerhardt was not just writing clichés in his hymn about fears and winds. To others he might have appeared to be stuck, but he made valuable use of this episode. Casting off doubts must have freed him for creativity, even while in an unemployed state. Freedom unleashes the believer for His purposes. So, is that why I’m given down-time for a season, maybe even a decade? Before I wish for something more exciting or profitable to come along, I think I’ll take a longer look at what might be under the surface where I’m at. Maybe this is where He wants me, for now.
All nine original verses to the song are at this link:
http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/g/i/v/giv2winds.htm
Biographic information on the composer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Gerhardthttp://www.hymnary.org/person/Gerhardt_P
No comments:
Post a Comment