Once to Every Man and Nation

I'll have to admit to not paying attention in church Sunday. Not sure why, the sermon didn't captivate me... when that happens I open the hymnal and start reading through my favorite hymns. It's my experience that the old familiar hymns will often provide more enlightenment, inspiration and comfort than most sermons.

"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6.

It's true, I go back to basics, what I learned from my parents. Specifically, the old hymns that I first learned to sing with my mother, we drove our Siamese cats crazy, with our noise. Then I progressed to learning The Apostles' Creed, making my first attempt at cursive writing. I was so proud when I showed it to my mom. She praised me and admired my work, then gently explained that I had to make a break between my words, they only LOOKED like they all ran together--

Comforting hymns, comforting creeds, comforting memories. All take me back, when happy or sad, jubilant or in defeat, optimistic -- or as now -- in desperate dread at what is happening to our Nation.


So, for lack of a sermon that resonated, my hymnal browsing became an absolute necessity. And I turned first to the hymns of my childhood and my mother, The Old Rugged Cross and I Love to Tell the Story, then to Be Thou My Vision, a hymn I learned to love because it was such an important prayer to a dear friend and Navy Chaplain. And finally to Once to Every Man and Nation, difficult to sing, even harder to accept as challenge.

Written by James Russell Lowell (1819-1891), the son of a Unitarian minister in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lowell was an abolitionist who opposed the Mexican War. The annexation of Texas, adding a new and large slave-holding state, inspired him to write The Present Crisis, four verses of which comprise the hymn Once to Every Man and Nation.

Once to every man and nation,
comes the moment to decide,
in the strife of truth with falsehood,
for the good or evil side
some great cause, some great decision,
offering each the bloom or blight,
and the choice goes by forever,
'twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble,
when we share her wretched crust,
ere her cause bring fame and profit,
and 'tis prosperous to be just;
then it is the brave man chooses
while the coward stands aside,
till the multitude make virtue
of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs,
Christ, thy bleeding feet we track,
toiling up new Calvaries ever
with the cross that turns not back;
new occasions teach new duties,
ancient values test our youth;
they must upward still and onward,
who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper,
yet the truth alone is strong;
though her portion be the scaffold,
and upon the throne be wrong;
yet that scaffold sways the future,
and behind the dim unknown,
standeth God within the shadow,
keeping watch above his own.

I'm at that "moment to decide", as are many reading this now, as are millions of Americans across our Homeland.

The cause of evil prospers today, as in the past. Our elected officials ignore the will of the People, trample on the Constitution. Our leaders are no better, their moral compass corrupted by power. The future of our Nation truly does sway upon the scaffold of tyranny. And it seems we cannot stop the relentless march toward socialism.

In spite of the president's assertions to the contrary, voiced in a muslim country, America is a Christian nation, built upon Judeo-Christian values and founded by men who wove their reverence for a Supreme Being into the very fiber of our Nation.

But the president spent the most formative years of his childhood in the company of communists, invited into his home as beloved family members. He lived in a communist nation, Indonesia, still home to the largest muslim population in the world. His values do not align with those of most Americans; his cultural identity is not that of an American.

"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it."

Though the cause of evil prosper,
yet the truth alone is strong;
though her portion be the scaffold,
and upon the throne be wrong;
yet that scaffold sways the future,
and behind the dim unknown,
standeth God within the shadow,
keeping watch above his own.

I may fear for our Nation. But I trust that the devotion of its Citizens and faith in our Creator will prevail.