How Long, O Lord?
A Hymn
HOW LONG, O LORD A Hymn How long the prophets prophesied, O Lord, your promised birth. You came at last, You lived, You died - You rose and raised the earth. We fell away, You came again In glory in Your Word, Proclaiming there Your endless reign, Our God and only Lord. But still, O Lord, on floor-worn knees We cry to rend the night: How long until our injuries On earth are set aright? Deceptions and injustices Endure on every side. How long in such a wilderness, O Lord, must we abide? A time, and times, and half a time Until the bride prepared For union walks all lands and finds How wrong can be repaired. In faithful hope we seek that day, Repenting of our sin And working justice where we may, While You work all within.
The third and final section of A Little Light has hymns and religious poems, including this hymn. I wrote this during a particularly turbulent time — the lockdowns and protests of 2020 — but even then, I was reflecting on the reality that every time has turbulence and trouble. I was wrestling with a challenge that the New Church faces: in the New Church, we believe that the Last Judgment was carried out as a spiritual event rather than a physical one in the 18th century, and that Christ’s return into the world is in our ability to see him in the deeper sense of Scripture, as revealed in the theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg. But if the Lord is already returning, why are things still so bad? The answer, I believe, is that God bends rather than breaks, and that His coming will gradually transform the world; but in the meantime, we must live with suffering and do what we can to relieve it.
After I wrote the poem, I asked Bryn Athyn music director Graham Bier for advice about a setting. He suggested the tune Kingsfold by Ralph Vaughan Williams, and on November 8th of that year, it was sung in church by the Bryn Athyn Cathedral Quartet (on that day Graham Bier, Max Nelson, Leanna Smith, and Ariel Martin). You can watch the video above.