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Up to You I Lift My Eyes

Scripture References

Confessions and Statements of Faith References

Further Reflections on Confessions and Statements of Faith References

Difficult times occur in the lives and communities of God’s people because this is a fallen world. The confessions demonstrate this perspective:

  • Belgic Confession, Article 15 teaches that “…by the disobedience of Adam original sin has been spread through the whole human race…a corruption of the whole human nature...” As a result, God’s people are “guilty and subject to physical and spiritual death, having become wicked, perverse, and corrupt in all [our] ways” (Article 14). In addition, “The devils and evil spirits are so corrupt that they are enemies of God and of everything good. They lie in wait for the church and every member of it like thieves, with all their power, to destroy and spoil everything by their deceptions” (Article 12).
  • Our World Belongs to God continues to affirm that “God has not abandoned the work of his hands,” nevertheless “our world, fallen into sin, has lost its first goodness...” (paragraph 4). And now “all spheres of life—family and friendship, work and worship school and state, play and art—bear the wounds of our rebellion” (paragraph 16).

Yet, in a fallen world, God’s providential care is the source of great assurance, comfort and strength. Through these thoughts, our trust in God is inspired.

  • Belgic Confession, Article 13 is a reminder that God’s providence reassures us that God leads and governs all in this world “according to his holy will…nothing happens in this world without his orderly arrangement.” Further, this Confession identifies that this “gives us unspeakable comfort since it teaches us that nothing can happen to us by chance but only by the arrangement of our gracious heavenly Father, who watches over us with fatherly care...in this thought we rest.”
  • Belgic Confession, Article 13, is a reminder that much is beyond human understanding and so “we do not wish to inquire with undue curiosity into what God does that surpasses human understanding and is beyond our ability to comprehend.”
  • In Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 9, Question and Answer 26 we testify that we “trust God so much that [we] do not doubt that he will provide whatever [we] need for body and soul and will turn to [our] good whatever adversity he sends upon [us] in this sad world.”
  • In Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 10, Question and Answer 28, we are assured that through our trust in the providence of God we can have “good confidence in our faithful God and Father that nothing in creation will separate us from his love.”
  • When we pray the Lord’s Prayer we ask not to be brought into the time of trial but rescued from evil. In doing so we ask that the Lord will “uphold us and make us strong with the strength of your Holy Spirit so that we may not go down to defeat in this spiritual struggle...” (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 52, Question and Answer 127)

Belgic Confession, Article 26 speaks about the intercession of Christ as the ascended Lord. “We have no access to God except through the one and only Mediator and Intercessor, Jesus Christ the Righteous.” We, therefore, do not offer our prayers as though saints could be our intercessor, nor do we offer them on the “basis of our own dignity but only on the basis of the excellence and dignity of Jesus Christ, whose righteousness is ours by faith.” Because Jesus Christ is our sympathetic High Priest, we approach the throne “in full assurance of faith.”

 

No greater assurance can be found than that expressed in Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 1, Question and Answer 1: “I am not my own by I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

 
In all difficult times, we eagerly await the final day when God “will set all things right, judge evil, and condemn the wicked” (Our World Belongs to God, paragraph 57).

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Up to You I Lift My Eyes

Additional Prayers

Optional concluding prayer
Lord Jesus,
our only comfort in life and in death,
the world’s contempt
did not dissuade you from accomplishing our salvation.
We look to no one but you to sustain us now
and through all that is yet to come. Amen.
— Lift Up Your Hearts (http://www.liftupyourheartshymnal.org)

Lord Jesus, our only comfort in life and in death,
the world’s contempt did not dissuade you from accomplishing our salvation.
May we look to no one but you to sustain us
now, and through all that is yet to come. Amen.
— Psalms for All Seasons (http://www.psalmsforallseasons.org)
421

Up to You I Lift My Eyes

Tune Information

Name
THE CALL
Key
c minor
Meter
7.7.7.7

Recordings

421

Up to You I Lift My Eyes

Hymn Story/Background

The tune THE CALL originated in a 1911 composition by Ralph Vaughn Williams entitled Five Mystical Songs, for baritone, chorus, and orchestra.  All five movements were set to texts by the famed English poet George Herbert (1593-1633); “The Call” was Herbert’s title for the fourth poem that begins “Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life.”  Harold Geer, editor of the 1956 Hymnal for Colleges and Schools published by Yale University, extracted this tune from that movement, which was subsequently published with the Herbert text in the Episcopal Hymnal 1982.  
— Emily Brink

Author Information

Emma Turl (b. Shrewsbury, 1946) grew up in Stamford, Lincolnshire. Educated at Stamford high School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, she graduated in 1968 in English language and Literature. Turl taught in Uganda for 2 years with Voluntary Service Overseas. Marrying John in 1971, they spent the next 10 years in Ghana. They finally returned to the United Kingdom with their two children in 1981. By this time she was blind, having experienced deteriorating eyesight since the age of nine.
 
Turl worked on paraphrasing the psalms in metrical verse from 1983-1985, and has subsequently produced some alternative versions of these and other Bible passages as well as writing hymns and songs, often inspired by a talk, Bible study, prayer, etc. She published Treasures Old and New in 1989 (an anthology of verses based on Scripture), and Time to Celebrate in 1999 (a collection of hymn and song texts, with music by Gill Berry and John Turl). Nine of her texts appear in Praise! (2000) and a few in other books and magazines.
 
Emma and John live in Essex and attend the abbey church at Waltham Abbey.
— Jubilate Bio (http://www.jubilate.co.uk/about/people/emma_turl)

Composer Information

Through his composing, conducting, collecting, editing, and teaching, Ralph Vaughan Williams (b. Down Ampney, Gloucestershire, England, October 12, 1872; d. Westminster, London, England, August 26, 1958) became the chief figure in the realm of English music and church music in the first half of the twentieth century. His education included instruction at the Royal College of Music in London and Trinity College, Cambridge, as well as additional studies in Berlin and Paris. During World War I he served in the army medical corps in France. Vaughan Williams taught music at the Royal College of Music (1920-1940), conducted the Bach Choir in London (1920-1927), and directed the Leith Hill Music Festival in Dorking (1905-1953). A major influence in his life was the English folk song. A knowledgeable collector of folk songs, he was also a member of the Folksong Society and a supporter of the English Folk Dance Society. Vaughan Williams wrote various articles and books, including National Music (1935), and composed numerous arrange­ments of folk songs; many of his compositions show the impact of folk rhythms and melodic modes. His original compositions cover nearly all musical genres, from orchestral symphonies and concertos to choral works, from songs to operas, and from chamber music to music for films. Vaughan Williams's church music includes anthems; choral-orchestral works, such as Magnificat (1932), Dona Nobis Pacem (1936), and Hodie (1953); and hymn tune settings for organ. But most important to the history of hymnody, he was music editor of the most influential British hymnal at the beginning of the twentieth century, The English Hymnal (1906), and coeditor (with Martin Shaw) of Songs of Praise (1925, 1931) and the Oxford Book of Carols (1928).
— Bert Polman

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