He must
have had plenty of questions that nagged at his conscience regarding various
circumstances, but he didn’t feel the need to hide them. Instead, Edward
Bickersteth wrote them for others to see when he composed “Peace, Perfect Peace”
in 1875. What if he had forgotten the ending punctuation, and made it a period,
not a question mark? Some of our contemporary hymnals do just that, to our
detriment. Would it be important to know, that Edward had some tough, even
sarcastic questions, and not declaring at the outset that he had the answers? Was
it his own searching, pleading voice that Bickersteth used that day? See if it’s
yours too.
Edward
Bickersteth was, someone might say, a “professional” man of faith who did not
take leave of his calling, even if he was on vacation in England. This 50-year
old guy might have been excused if he had taken a mental holiday, but instead
his ears perked up when the English minister’s sermon reached him in an emotional place where he’d not been
before. Isaiah 26: 3 told him that God’s peace is perfection. It must have been
providential that he visited a dying relative a few hours later, and probably not
an accident either that his kin was despondent. What does a close family talk
about in their last earthly moments? We can guess what Edward and this individual
may have discussed that afternoon – sorrow; life’s stresses; loneliness; unease
with the beyond, even for the believer; and physical pain. These issues’
fingerprints are on Bickersteth’s poetry he composed that day. Some vacation,
huh? Though Bickersteth must have previously been near others who were in death’s
throes, did being with a fading family member change the dynamic? One might
think so. Yes, he’d been trained at an institution of higher education, was an accomplished
poet, and had been in ministry for over 20 years by the afternoon of that 1875
encounter with his relative. But in this crucible, he evidently drew on
something most recent for this intense experience. He thought ‘I just heard something
today that might help’. If it’s true that out of death comes life, then that’s
what happened anew for Edward Bickersteth that day, as he gave life to a new
hymn while watching and helping his relative expire with greater calm. The peace,
perfect peace is not a stuttering disability. It’s a transformative experience,
one that is a divine overwhelming of evil’s designs, as the composer reflected
on what Isaiah has to say.
Perhaps
it helped to embrace the apprehensions, not dismiss them, Edward may have
reasoned. That’s a ‘Job’ approach, you might say. Give voice to the anger and
disappointment, yet maintain that He’s trustworthy. Even Jesus took this path
in his death moment. “…why have you forsaken me?” Bickersteth’s hymn is so
counter to what I most often do when I hear a dying person’s complaint. I avoid
the tough, bitter-sounding words death vocalizes; instead, I might urge the
person with something like‘Oh, don’t say that, just think of the good things’.
But, Edward didn’t discard the questions. He listened and gave them a reply,
the only one –the person of Jesus--that we’ll be able to check out, after we’ve
checked out.
See more
information on the song discussed above in The Complete Book of Hymns –
Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen
and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006. Also, see Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring
Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications,
1990.
See
further biographic information on the composer here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bickersteth_%28bishop_of_Exeter%29
See this
site also for song’s story, and to see all original eight verses, including one
reportedly never published: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/p/e/a/peaceper.htm
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