Hymns of Hope and Comfort: I’ll Praise My Maker While I’ve Breath

During this time of fear and uncertainty in the COVID-19 wilderness, I’ve decided to do something a little different. I’m going to be daily using my blog to share texts and videos of hymns that pass along hope and comfort until the restrictions are lifted, and we can worship in our buildings once again. I hope you find them to be encouraging and edifying during this time.

Take care, everyone. Wash your hands. And keep the faith.

Here is the Polk Street United Methodist Church in Amarillo, Texas singing this lovely hymn, written by Isaac Watts as a paraphrase of Psalm 146, was later revised by John Wesley. In life and in death, we belong to God, Maker of earth and sea and sky, who pours eyesight on the blind and supports the fainting mind. I love how the 4th stanza echoes the first.

I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath,
and when my voice is lost in death,
praise shall employ my nobler powers.
My days of praise shall ne’er be past
while life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures.

How happy they whose hopes rely
on Israel’s God, who made the sky
and earth and seas with all their train;
whose truth for ever stands secure,
who saves the oppressed, and feeds the poor.
And none shall find his promise vain.

The Lord pours eyesight on the blind;
the Lord supports the fainting mind
and sends the laboring conscience peace.
He helps the stranger in distress,
the widowed and the fatherless,
and grants the prisoner sweet release.

I’ll praise him while he lends me breath;
and when my voice is lost in death,
praise shall employ my nobler powers.
My days of praise shall ne’er be past
while life and thought and being last,
or immortality endures.

– Isaac Watts; alt. John Wesley

Photo:
pixabay