Entrust Your Days and Burdens

Predigtreihe: Paul Gerhardt, 2007

Meditation for Ash Wednesday, February 21, 2007, by David Zersen

Entrust Your Days and Burdens – Paul Gerhardt 1607-1676

Entrust your days and burdens
To God’s most loving hand;
He cares for you while ruling
The sky, the sea, the land;
He that in clouds and tempest
Finds breakthrough for the sun
Will find right pathways for you
Till trav’ling days are done.

Lord, till we see the ending
Of all this life’s distress,
Faith’s hand, love’s sinews strengthen
With joy our spirits bless.
As yours, we have committed
Ourselves into your care
To heaven to praise you there.

My father was a life-long reader of the Lil Abner cartoon and loved to talk to us children about Joe Bftspllk, the unpronounceable name spoken only by putting your tongue between your lips and blowing. It was also Joe’s audible commentary on life. Wherever he went, a rain-cloud hovered over him. No matter how sunny the setting, things under Joe’s cloud were bad. And he tended to bring gloom and bad luck to all who encountered him.

All of us know people like this and perhaps we have elements of Joe in our own personalities. Of course there are people with serious depression who may need medical or cognitive therapies. Most of us, however, tend to be negative only at certain times or during specific seasons. Lent is such a season, in many places a hold-out from winter with continuing cold days and even a sometimes negative focus on self-denial, suffering and death. In our own ways, it is a time for faithful worshippers to feel that they lack what others enjoy in the way of freedom, joy and confidence.

The hymn chosen as our focus for Ash Wednesday calls to our attention a faithful pastor and poet who had very different views. Living during the infamous Thirty Year War, his professional and family lives were devastated by death from the war and disease coming in its aftermath. If ever there was a man who had a right to go around with a cloud over his head moaning, “Why me, Lord,” it was Paul Gerhardt. However, the hymns which he wrote during his lifetime, over 130 of them, were typically infused with confidence and joy.

In the hymn chosen for Ash Wednesday, Gerhardt encourages us to take life’s days and burdens and entrust them to God’s loving care because his maturing plans are not always so obvious to us. Gradually, however, his grace will reveal the sun we long for and we will be able to celebrate victory, not defeat.

Of course, such confidence is grounded in the very Lenten message in which we are about to immerse ourselves for the next six weeks. It is not a message of defeat, but of victory. The suffering that Jesus endures comes at the hands of all those who would prefer to seek life’s meaning in self-centeredness and self-commiseration, the very things which Jesus’ positive life-style seeks to call them—and us—away from. But they—and we—will have none of this life-for-others business or abundant life nonsense. We want the assurance that everything is intended to secure our advantage and to give us life on our terms.

So the crowds crucify Jesus—and we would do the same! Yet the Lenten story ends not in defeat, but in victory because God rejects such self-destruction in us and restores Jesus to life. His resurrection is God’s affirmation not only of Jesus’ life, but of ours as well. In Jesus’ resurrection, God calls us to accept that lifestyle which insists that God’s wisdom rules “in ways to rouse your wonder at all his love can do!” (verse 4) At the end of our annual visit to the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, we will again be reminded that no matter how bleak and cloudy life’s days and burdens sometimes appear, God’s love is in charge of our lives and of this world’s destiny.

That Paul Gerhardt saw this in the midst of his many personal difficulties (burying his wife and almost all of his children, plus hundreds of the members of his congregation), is a tribute to his faith in God’s love revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a Lenten challenge for us to ask where we place our focus, what our interests envision, and how we know that we are loved.

A recent study assessed the results of those who campaigned for the U.S. presidency, based on whether they had negative or positive visions for the country. In all cases, said this study, those who warned Americans to watch out for rising inflation, threats of war, dangers of all kinds, lost the election—even if historians believe they would have been the better candidates for the office. And those who celebrated with confidence the bright future of the country, as in Ronald Reagan’s “It is morning for America,” won the hearts of their countrymen.

What this hymn, which we will now sing, is encouraging us to consider, however, is not merely being psychologically upbeat. It is encouraging Christians not to blurt Joe Bftspllc’s expletive with their lips, but to let their faith in God’s love for us express itself in confidence and joy. That will assure that this Lenten season, and every season, “till we see the ending, of all this life’s distress,” holds up for us the assurance that God is in charge of our destinies. It will provide the promise that we are capable of affirming life’s goodness just as God has affirmed it in us through Christ.

Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen
djzersen@aol.com