July 21, 2023
Well sung, but little known?
It strikes me that we often sing hymns in our worship and have little knowledge of the people who wrote them and the context of their writing. This applies to those penning the lyrics and crafting the tunes, as well as the context out of which their hymns came, be it their personal story or the moment in world history that it was written in and for. I thought of this as I have recently had the opportunity to revisit the life and influence of one of the most beloved hymn writers in our tradition, Lina Sandell. Whether new or review, her story and her hymns, are worth considering, I believe.
Born Carolina Wilhelmina Sandell in 1832 to a Lutheran pastor serving in the Småland region of Sweden. “Lina,” as she preferred to be called, was a sickly child. As such she was often found reading in her father’s study more often than playing with other children or her siblings. Very early in her childhood she was stricken by a paralysis that kept her bedridden for long periods of time. Doctors at that time gave her little chance of overcoming this disability, though her paarents believed that God could, in time, remove this paralysis, they also feared she could die at any time. One Sunday morning, Lina began reading the Bible and praying with great fervor. When her parents returned from church, they found her dressed and walking without difficulty. This experience of restoration shaped Lina’s life, as she began writing poems of gratitude and love to God arising from this experience. Lina published her first book of spiritual poetry when she was 16 years old.
Though no longer physically restricted, she remained close to her father and joined his cause promoting a pietist revival within the Lutheran state church. Her relationship with her father ended suddenly when he drowned in front of her, with her being helpless to save him. Shortly after her father died, her mother died. Though she did marry later in life, she never had a family, as her only child was stillborn. Her life was filled with sorrow and challenge, but never without faith and hope.
Lina continued her father’s work promoting the renewal movement in the Swedish church. Many of her poems were set to music by Oscar Ahnfelt, who sang and played guitar and was a primary interpreter of her songs which became the soundtrack to the Swedish revival. The king of what is now Norway and Sweden, King Karl XV, was trying to squelch this movement, seen as divisive in his kingdom, by preventing Ahnfelt’s preaching performances of Sandell’s hymns. The King requested Ahnfelt to sing in his presence, for which Lina penned a new hymn. After it was performed, the King tearfully proclaimed that Ahnfelt could sing throughout his kingdom as much and as often as he liked.
Sandell’s lyrics speak of deep faith in the context of trying times: sickness, death, persecution, and doubt. Her over 600 hymns speak of a simple, childlike faith in a loving and steadfast God. They spoke out of her experiences to her life and times, and continue to speak to us in our lives and times. They speak—then and now—both candidly and hopefully about faith in dark seasons. That is why they are some of our most beloved hymns, “Children of the Heavenly Father,” “Day by Day, and with Each Passing Moment,” and “Thy Holy Wings,” to name only a few. But they also speak to the core faith values of the Covenant Church, which refuses to offer a Pollyanna-ish view of life’s troubles, but speaks of God’s faithfulness to us in their midst, and invites our faithfulness to God in return.
The gift of Lina Sandell’s hymns are that they are vehicles for us to express our faith in our life and times, from words that arose out of the core of her life’s struggles and her experience of God’s grace in their midst. Though she never signed her name to any of her hymns, identifying their author as only “L.S,” might we allow her words to become our words, putting her signature on our life and faith, leaving no doubt about whom we sing—the God who restores us, gives us hope in grief, and confidence in God’s grace “with each passing moment.”
Sing well, my friends.
~ Pastor Todd