When our culture celebrates Father’s Day each year in June, we who know the Lord are happy to join in expressions of gratitude to our earthly fathers for all they have done for us. This is certainly one way in which we keep the fifth commandment: “Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.” In addition to giving pleasure to our parents, such honor pleases the Lord when we show our gratitude for the love they have shown to us, the care they have given to us, the guidance they have offered to us, not to mention the material provisions that we have enjoyed from their sacrificial generosity, whether from food and clothing over the years or the financial help for schooling and in the early years of our careers and marriages.
But what a great opportunity to renew our gratitude, and indeed our joyful praise, toward our heavenly Father. In the sixth chapter of Matthew’s gospel (in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount), the word Father is used of God ten times! In the Old Testament, God was known as the father of Israel, of His chosen people. But when we come to the New Testament, there is a change. We find that believers are taught to address God in a more individual and personal way, we could even say in a more intimate way. This has become the normal manner of private prayer, as each of us begins by addressing Him with the affectionate title, “Father …”
The title “Father” is used of God in every New Testament book with the exception of the tiny epistle of Third John. In nearly every one of his letters, Paul’s opening salutation refers to “God our Father.” The name represents both His authority over His children (exercised in disciplining them), and His loving care and guidance of them. There is a limited sense in which God is the Father (i.e. the Progenitor) of all, in that He is the Creator of all. But our particular and personal relationship to Him as our Father comes when we are born again into the family of God, through faith in Christ. It’s then, as His blood-bought children, that the indwelling Spirit of God awakens in us a sense of that new relationship and we cry, “Abba, Father” (an affectionate expression meaning something like “dearest Father”).
When we meditate on that title that God has revealed for Himself, what are some of the dimensions of this relationship with Him that should bring us joy and comfort? He is the perfect father, so comparisons with our earthly fathers can only be suggestive. He infinitely exceeds everything that our human fathers have done for us and done to us. But here are a few things to consider about our heavenly Father. Our earthly fathers gave us life (and were probably present when we were born), they provided for all our physical needs as we grew (everything from food and shelter to clothing and health care), they guided us in decisions we made (for schooling, marriage, career choices).
There are also the details of emotional and spiritual care they gave us, teaching us about the Lord, praying for us, encouraging us when we were stressed, comforting us when we suffered, lovingly disciplining us when we made bad decisions, and rewarding us when we made good decisions. How wonderful to have had a father who loved us, sought the best for us, always stood with us, and held us close to his heart, and add to those the countless times our fathers rescued and protected us from harm. All these things and more, and in far greater ways, we have from our heavenly Father who has adopted us and made us His own.
Greater by far is the fact that we have a heavenly Father who forgives our sins. When we offended our earthly fathers, it brought sadness to them and guilt (and hopefully remorse) to us. But when we have offended our heavenly Father, it is much more serious. Since we owe to Him our love and obedience, acts and attitudes of disobedience, however large or small, were far more serious, amounting to cosmic treason, as theologian R. C. Sproul often described it. But what kind of Father is this in heaven who forgives us over and over again out of His great lovingkindness, as we read in Psalm 130:3-4? We rightly sing that “My sins, they are many; His mercy is more,” as the 2016 song by Matt Boswell and Matt Papa describes it.
But not all have the right to address the Almighty as “Father,” in this intimate sense. The concept of the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man is not biblical. The same Lord Jesus who instructed His followers, “In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven,” also said of those who opposed Him, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do.” And the same Apostle Paul who wrote of “our God and Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting consolation and good hope by grace” also wrote of those outside of Christ as “the sons of disobedience,” and “by nature children of wrath” (i.e. those destined for eternal wrath).
One of the sweetest passages to a believer’s ears is this in 1 John 3:1-3. “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
Among certain people groups or denominations, there are occasions that demand a particular hymn. Indeed, not to sing that song would be considered at best a serious oversight and at worse an offense. On Reformation Sunday, Lutherans will sing “A Mighty Fortress.” Presbyterian Psalm-singers will sing “All People That on Earth Do Dwell” (Psalm 100). It’s just as certain as “O for a Thousand Tongues” being the first selection in a Methodist hymnal. For Swedes and many churches of Scandinavian descent, a baptism or funeral would be incomplete without singing the beloved “Children of the Heavenly Father” (“Trygarre kan ingen vara”) by Lina Sandell.
Karolina “Lina” Vilhelmina Sandell was born on October 3, 1832 in Fröeryd, a small town in the Småland province of Sweden. Her father was a Lutheran pastor sympathetic to the growing pietist movement, and raised Lina in a faith that emphasized the grace and warmth of God. At the same time, she received an excellent liberal arts education from her father and brother-in-law, learning to read and write in Swedish, Norwegian, French, German, and English. She was stricken with a paralysis as a young child that confined her to bed with little chance for recovery, but by age twelve she had improved so that she was able to walk. From this experience, she began writing verses to express her gratitude to God, and at age sixteen she published her first book of poems.
Throughout her life, she wrote over 2000 hymn texts and poems (earning her the title the “Fanny Crosby of Sweden”) and worked as an editor at the Evangelical National Foundation, a mission organization within the Lutheran Church of Sweden. Much of the popularity of her music was due to Oscar Ahnfelt. He was tutored by his older brothers and entered Lund University in 1829 intending to be a minister. However, his interests in his studies waned, and he earned his living as a tutor while studying music in Stockholm, where he became a disciple of Carl Rosenius, the leader of the conventicle movement. A Pietist, he travelled throughout Scandinavia to sing, accompanying himself with a ten-string guitar. The famous singer Jenny Lind funded his first collection of songs, the 1850 “Andeliga Sanger,” which contained many hymns by Miss Sandell.
With such a prolific career, it is surprising to discover that her most popular hymn, “Children of the Heavenly Father,” was written quite early in her life, perhaps as young as seventeen! As J. Irving Erickson notes in his companion to the “Covenant Hymnal” (1973): “An old tradition in Fräderyd…relates that she wrote ‘Tryggare kan ingen vara’ while seated on the branch of a large ash tree that stood in the parsonage yard. From that spot on warm summer evenings she could listen to the content twitter of the birds as they hid in their nests among the green leaves, and from there she could watch the stars as they began to appear. Her impressions fortified the biblical concepts of the security of God’s children.”
And it is the “security of God’s children” that serves as the central theme around which this text is built. The bosom of the “heavenly Father” serves as a “refuge” where children are nourished and protected from evil by the “mighty arms” of God. The last two stanzas build on this theme of protection by boldly confessing that nothing can separate children from their God (Romans 8:38-39), a God who will never forsake God’s children (Deuteronomy 31:6).
While it could be legitimately claimed that such sentiments seem to make light of suffering and evil, it can also be argued that the many tragic events in Sandell’s life served to burn away the dross of sentimentality. In addition to the severe illnesses she suffered throughout her life, by the age of 28 she had lost her sister to tuberculosis, her father to drowning (which she helplessly witnessed on a boat in in Lake Vättern), and finally her mother to a prolonged illness. Even her marriage to businessman Carl Oscar Berg (a wholesale merchant and future member of the Swedish Parliament) was marred by grief, as she endured the collapse of her husband’s business and the birth of a stillborn baby girl, their only child. In light of such suffering, what remains in the ashes is a song that serves as a bold confession of faith similar to the cry of Job that she paraphrases in the final stanza: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (1:21). In the wake of the anguish of losing so many loved ones, Lina wrote in her diary in 1860, “But every time the Lord thus pulls up a planting, in whose shadow we have lied down, it is as if the view is at once expanded. We stand there so lonely in the open field without these visible supports to lean on; but at the same time the invisible home has become so much more real… Let me never seek any other support than Yours. All other supports are unreliable and they fail when you want to rely on them. But You are steadfast.”
Even after the loss of her own child, Lina’s heart and care for children remained steadfast. She cared for her nieces and nephews in her own home, and wrote many songs with the perspective and language of children in mind. Lina also wrote several missionary biographies and children’s publications that were used throughout Scandinavia. Lina’s hymn, “Children of the Heav’nly Father” is still sung faithfully today for funerals and baptisms, especially in churches of Scandinavian descent.
Historians don’t seem to agree on just how many hymns Lina wrote. Most seem to land somewhere between 600 and 2,000 hymns, including “Blott en dag” (“Day by Day”), causing her to be known as the Fanny Crosby of Sweden. Much of her success and popularity was due to Oscar Ahnfelt, who set many of her verses to music, playing his 10-string guitar and singing her hymns throughout Scandinavia. Americans were first exposed to Lina’s songs in 1850, when the Swedish opera singer, Jenny Lind, sponsored by P.T. Barnum (founder of the Barnum & Bailey Circus), toured the United States. Jenny Lind was known worldwide as the “Swedish Nightingale,” and often sang the music of Lina Sandell and Oscar Ahnfelt.
When Sandell died of typhoid fever in 1903 at the age of 71, thousands came to attend her burial in Stockholm. Like so many Swedish funerals before and after, the choir began to sing “Trygarre kan ingen varao” (“No one could be safer”). Spontaneously, the swelling congregation joined in to sing together of the God whose love is so great that “neither life nor death shall ever from the Lord His children sever.”
This hymn has come to us in America as a result of the translation from Ernst Wilhelm Olson (1870-1958). He prepared the English translation for the 1925 Hymnal of the Lutheran Augustana Synod. As editor, writer, poet, and translator, Olson made a valuable contribution to Swedish-American culture and to church music. His family immigrated to Nebraska when he was five years old, but he spent much of his life in the Chicago area. Educated at Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, he was editor of several Swedish-American newspapers and spent most of his professional career as an editor for the Augustana Book Concern (1911-1949). Olson wrote “History of the Swedes in Illinois” (1908). He also contributed four original hymns and twenty-eight translations to “The Hymnal” (1925) of the Evangelical Lutheran Augustana Synod and served on the committee that produced the Lutheran “Service Book and Hymnal” (1958).
Stanza 1 sings of God’s safety. It’s the best safety possible for any human being. We are not shielded from difficulty or discomfort, but even in the valley of the shadow of death we are not alone. Our heavenly Father and our Good Shepherd are with us to keep us from all evil. What wonderful assurance that gives us in every circumstance. God’s children are those who come into His family as a result of His great love for us (1 John 3:1). Therefore, those who thus become His spiritual sons and daughters call Him their Father (Matthew 6:9). As a father wishes to keep His children safe, so God’s children can safely gather in His bosom like nestling chicks gathered under their mother’s wings (Matthew 23:37).
Children of the heav’nly Father,
Safely in His bosom gather;
Nesting bird nor star in Heaven
Such a refuge e’er was given.
Stanza 2 sings of God’s nourishment. God provides not only for the physical needs of His people, but also spiritual nourishment through Christ, the bread of life, just as He provided manna for the Israelites in the wilderness (Matthew 6:33; John 6:32-33). Some might question the statement, “From all evil things He spares them,” because bad things do happen to good people; but we look upon this as saying that He spares us from all evil things that are beyond our ability to bear (1 Corinthians 10:13). In order to accomplish this and to continue to provide for our nourishment, He bears us up in His mighty arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).
God His own does tend and nourish;
In His holy courts they flourish.
From all evil things He spares them;
In His mighty arms He bears them.
Stanza 3 sings of God’s grace. Every good thing in our life comes from our heavenly Father, with whom there is no shadow of turning (James 1:17). And everything that comes to us will ultimately prove to be good in His sight. God has promised that nothing, including either life or death, can sever us from Him and His love (Romans 8:35-39). Regardless of what happens to us in this life, God’s grace is always available (Titus 2:11). Because of His grace, He knows all our sorrows so that we can cast our cares upon Him (1 Peter 5:7).
Neither life nor death shall ever
from the Lord His children sever;
Unto them His grace is showing,
And their sorrows all is knowing.
Stanza 4 sings of God’s blessing. Especially when we are confronted by our weaknesses and failures, and feeling guilt when the Holy Spirit convicts us of sin, we feel unworthy of His goodness. More than that, Satan will tempt us to doubt that our heavenly Father truly loves us. But God’s care for us is emphasized by the fact that He knows even the very number of the hairs on our head (Matthew 10:28-30). Therefore, there need be no daily care to encumber us, because we can cast our burden on Him (Psalm 55:22). Once again, it is a great comfort to know that every good and perfect blessing comes down from the Father (James 1:17).
Lo, their very hairs He numbers,
And no daily care encumbers
Those who share His ev’ry blessing,
And His help in woes distressing.
Stanza 5 sings of God’s protection. And what a great protector we have, one who is infinite in this triad of attributes: His wisdom, His love, and His power. All three of those will characterize everything He does for us, in us, and through us. We should praise this God who protects us (Psalm 22:22-24). Unlike human protectors who may fall asleep, our divine Protector never slumbers (Psalm 121:1-4). Therefore we can pray to Him to deliver us from the evil one (Matthew 6:13).
Praise the Lord in joyful numbers;
Your protector never slumbers;
At the will of your Defender,
Every foeman (rival) must surrender.
Stanza 6 sings of God’s preservation. The Scriptures are filled with illustrations of God’s preserving those He loves. Take just this one example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace in Daniel 3. They went into the flames professing confidence that the Lord could deliver them if He chose to do so. But even if He did not, they would not serve any other God than Him. And think of illustrations throughout the centuries of church history, including the way God preserved Martin Luther from almost certain death at the stake, allowing him to continue to preach and write as the Reformation was spreading. Ultimately, it is the Lord who gives and who takes away (Job 1:21). However, He has said that regardless of any particular moment or event, He will never leave nor forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). The reason is that His purpose is to preserve us unto His heavenly kingdom (2 Timothy 4:18).
God has given, He has taken,
God His children ne’er forsaketh;
His the loving purpose solely
To preserve them, pure and holy.
This particular tune (TRYGGARD KAN INGAN VARA or SANDELL) is of uncertain origin. Miss Sandell did not use this melody originally. It first appeared with her hymn in the 1873 “Lofsanger Och Andeliga Wisor”(“Song Book for Sunday Schools”) edited by Frederik Engelke. Though some think it may have come from England to Sweden, most believe that it is a Swedish folksong, perhaps of German origin, discovered by Engelke. Some sources indicate that it may have been arranged for Sandell’s hymn by Oscar Ahnfelt, since he provided the music for almost all of her songs. Though the state church opposed Pietistic hymns, Ahnfelt was ordered to sing them before King Karl XV who, after hearing them, said, “You may sing as much as you desire in both of my kingdoms.” Later, Carolina wrote, “Ahnfelt has sung my songs into the hearts of the people.” He died at Karlshamm in Blekinge , Sweden, on October 22, 1882. Several translations of “Children of the Heavenly Father” from Swedish into English have been made, but the most common one is by Ernst William Olson (1870-1958), which first appeared in 1925 in “The Hymnal of the Augustana Lutheran Synod.”
Here is a link to four of the stanzas sung by the Lutheran Concordia Choir.