4. Hope right here and now

The fourth hymn of the day, and the first one of the committal service at St George’s Chapel Windsor, was ‘All My Hope On God Is Founded’ by Joachim Neander.

Throughout her ninety-six years of life, and seventy years reigning as monarch, the Queen saw more changes than most. For starters, she met thirteen American Presidents and fifteen Prime Ministers in that time. She was extremely well placed to have a view on life’s ‘changing order’.

That’s a phrase which pops up in this hymn. ‘All my hope on God is founded / All my trust He shall renew; / He my guide through changing order / Only good and only true.’ We’ve seen how the Queen’s choice of hymns made it clear that she was focused on the hope of a new creation, in the future. But this hymn is about the here and now. And it says that for Christians wading through the shifting and sinking sands of this world, there is a guide, and He is the God of the Bible.

This world can be so frustrating! We dream dreams, and make plans, and build and wait and build some more. And very often, the end result is nothing like we had expected, and doesn’t last for anything like as long as we had hoped. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of working towards a goal, only for it to be dismantled when you step back and the next person in line comes along. One minute, you’re shaping your legacy to the world; next minute, it’s disappeared in a puff of smoke. It’s just part and parcel of the human condition, as Joachim Neander writes: ‘All that human toil can fashion / Tower and temple fall to dust.’

So what value is there in our plans and purposes and projects, if they are all for the scrap heap? The answer is that they all have tremendous value for those who have a solid base and a strong foothold. And God provides that.

Empire-building in the hope that those empires will last independently of ourselves is a doomed enterprise. But to work in the power that God supplies is to know the limitations of this world but to flourish in it anyway! And flourishing of this sort involves doing and saying and thinking things that are fruitful, and fulfilling, and even fun: ‘In His will our souls find pleasure.’ To do life God’s way is to discover what we were made for: to glorify Him. And it is to find that God is the most generous of givers: ‘day by day’ He ‘grants to us His gifts of love.’

Suddenly the present day doesn’t look so bad. Because what is on offer in the gospel is real hope in the here and now. What is more, it’s on offer to all those who will trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour, as the Queen did. Christians are not “so heavenly-minded that they are no earthly good,” as someone once said. Far from it: they are heavenly-minded and at the same time thoroughly equipped for the trials and tribulations of this world.

That’s the experience of every Christian in this world: one of cheerful hope in the midst of all the frustration and transition. But the hymn doesn’t end there. Those singing the final verse are invited to acknowledge the ‘call’ of Jesus: it’s a call to live a life of hope alongside the heartache. It’s also a call to take up our cross alongside him, keeping our eyes fixed firmly on him – as we’ll see in the final hymn of the series.

Where to find it in the Bible: Psalm 46; Mark 8:34-37