Hymn History--Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care

  • May 22, 2011
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Hymn History Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care Lord, it belongs not to my care Whether I die or live; To love and serve Thee is my share, And this Thy grace must give. If life be long, I will be glad, That I may long obey; If short, yet why should I be sad To welcome endless day? Christ leads me through no darker rooms Than He went through before; He that unto God’s kingdom comes Must enter by this door. Come, Lord, when grace hath made me meet Thy blessèd face to see; For if Thy work on earth be sweet What will Thy glory be! Then I shall end my sad complaints And weary sinful days, And join with the triumphant saints That sing my Savior’s praise. My knowledge of that life is small, The eye of faith is dim; But ’tis enough that Christ knows all, And I shall be with Him. Richard Baxter (1615-1691) Richard Baxter was an English clergyman that was “too Puritan for the Anglican bishops and too Episcopalian for the Presbyterians”. In other words, he was always getting into trouble for being outspoken. When he was seventy, he was brought in front of a judge accused of writing a paraphrase of the New Testament and was sentenced to be whipped and jailed. He wrote this hymn in honor of his wife who had died a few years earlier after a long illness. He used Philippians 1:21—“For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain”, as the basis for the words.


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