Be Thou My Vision: Poetry That Teaches Us What to See
Be Thou My Vision: Poetry That Teaches Us What to See
There are hymns that ask God to give us something.
And then there are hymns that ask God to become everything.
“Be Thou My Vision” belongs to the second kind.
Its opening prayer is almost startling in its simplicity:
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart;Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
It is not first a prayer for success, health, prosperity, protection, or even happiness. It is a prayer for sight.
The writer is asking God to determine what matters.
That makes this ancient Irish hymn remarkably contemporary.
We live surrounded by things demanding our attention.
Our eyes are pulled in a hundred directions.
We are constantly being told what deserves
our concern,
our admiration,
our fear,
and our desire.
“Be Thou My Vision” begins somewhere else.
Lord, teach me what to see.
An Ancient Prayer
The words we sing today have a long history.
The hymn comes from an ancient Irish Christian poem, traditionally associated with Dallán Forgaill, an early Irish poet (c560-640) better known as Saint Dallán .
Early forms of the poem survive in Irish manuscripts dating to approximately the eighth century, although the traditional attribution reaches further back. The original Irish text was not written as the hymn we know today.
More than a thousand years later, Irish scholar Mary Elizabeth Byrne translated the old poem into English prose in 1905. Eleanor Hull then shaped Byrne's translation into verse, publishing her poetic version in The Poem Book of the Gael in 1912.
The familiar melody, SLANE, is an old Irish tune. It eventually became associated with the hymn and helped carry these ancient words into the worship of the modern church.
So when we sing “Be Thou My Vision,” we are not simply singing a modern hymn.
We are joining a prayer that has crossed centuries.
And perhaps that is part of its power.
Not Merely Seeing God
The hymn does not simply say, “Help me remember God.”
It says, “Be Thou my vision.”
That is much more demanding.
Vision determines direction.
What we see as most important determines what we pursue.
What we believe to be beautiful determines what we admire.
What we believe to be valuable determines
what we are willing to sacrifice.
The hymn therefore moves quickly from sight to thought:
Thou my best thought by day or by night;Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
God is not being added to an already crowded life.
God is being placed at the center of it.
The prayer is not, “Lord, give me a Christian way of looking at my life.”
It is closer to:
Lord, let my life be seen through You.
“Be Thou My Wisdom”
The second movement takes the prayer deeper:
Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true Word;/I ever with Thee, and Thou with me, Lord.
There is a difference between possessing information and possessing wisdom.
The hymn is not asking merely to know more about God. It is asking God to become the source and standard of understanding.
That is a very biblical idea.
Paul writes that Christ “became to us wisdom from God” (1 Corinthians 1:30).
James tells believers who lack wisdom to ask God for it.
The book of Proverbs repeatedly teaches that wisdom begins with the fear of the Lord.
The ancient hymn writer understood something we easily forget:
We do not simply need more answers. We need the right center from which to understand the answers we already have.
What About Everything Else?
Then comes one of the hymn's most challenging declarations:
Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,Thou mine inheritance, now and always.
This is where the hymn stops being merely beautiful and becomes searching.
What would happen if we actually believed this?
Riches matter.
Reputation matters.
Achievement matters.
The opinions of other people can matter.
But none of them can carry the weight we sometimes place upon them.
The hymn does not merely tell us that earthly things are bad. It puts them in their proper place.
They are not our inheritance.
God is.
That changes the way a person sees both abundance and poverty, both success and failure, both applause and obscurity.
If God is our treasure, then everything else becomes secondary.
The Forgotten Verse
There is another reason I love this hymn.
Many congregations sing four verses of “Be Thou My Vision,” but the traditional five-verse version contains a verse that is often omitted:
Be Thou my breastplate, my sword for the fight;Be Thou my dignity, Thou my delight;Thou my soul's shelter, Thou my high tower:Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.
That verse gives the hymn a harder edge.
This is not merely a quiet devotional poem.
It is also the prayer of a person who knows that life contains conflict.
The language of breastplate, sword, shelter, and high tower reminds us of the biblical language of spiritual warfare and God's protection.
The vision of Christ does not remove us from the battle.
It tells us how to stand in it.
“Whatever Befall”
The final verse brings the whole prayer together:
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,Still be my vision, O Ruler of all.
Those words may be the heart of the entire hymn.
Whatever befall.
Not whatever I can control.
Not whatever I prefer.
Not whatever happens according to my plans.
Whatever befall.
The prayer is that Christ will remain the center when circumstances change.
That is remarkably close to the faith expressed in “It Is Well With My Soul,” which we explored earlier in this series.
There, the soul learns to trust God amid sorrow. Here, the believer asks for a vision that remains fixed upon God regardless of what comes.
The circumstances may change.
The vision does not.
Poetry That Teaches Us What to See
Perhaps that is why this old Irish prayer still speaks so clearly.
We spend enormous energy deciding what deserves our attention.
The hymn asks us to begin somewhere deeper:
Who deserves the center of our attention?
The answer is not a possession.
It is not a reputation.
It is not an achievement.
It is not even a particular circumstance in which we hope God will place us.
It is Christ Himself.
Be Thou my vision.
Not merely when I worship.
Not merely when I pray.
Not merely when life is difficult.
By day and by night.Waking or sleeping.In plenty or in want.In praise or in obscurity.Whatever befall.
That is a large prayer.
And perhaps that is exactly why this little hymn has endured for so many centuries.
It asks God not merely to change what we see.
It asks Him to change the way we see everything.
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Open My Eyes, That I May See
Open my eyes, that I may see
glimpses of truth thou hast for me;
place in my hands the wonderful key
that shall unclasp and set me free.
Silently now I wait for thee,
ready, my God, thy will to see.
Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine!
Open my ears, that I may hear
voices of truth thou sendest clear;
and while the wavenotes fall on my ear,
everything false will disappear.
Silently now I wait for thee,
ready, my God, thy will to see.
Open my ears, illumine me, Spirit divine!
Open my mouth, and let me bear
gladly the warm truth everywhere;
open my heart and let me prepare
love with thy children thus to share.
Silently now I wait for thee,
ready, my God, thy will to see.
Open my heart, illumine me, Spirit divine!
--Clara H. Scott, 1841-1897
Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Psalm 119:18
To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me. Acts 26:18
And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. Revelation 19:11
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