day no. 16,396 continued... Jehovah Tsidkenu

While I was on my regular, late afternoon, lunchtime walk I heard for the first time Robert Murray M'Cheyne's poem Jehovah Tsidkenu while listening to Calvinist Poetry: 101 Poems by Calvinist Poets edited by Douglas Wilson and Jayson Grieser and published by Canon Press. He originally wrote it back on November 18, 1834 in Edinburgh, Scotland and visited me for the first time 68,966 days later on a sunny afternoon in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Jehovah Tsidkenu

"The Lord our righteousness."

(The watchword of the Reformers.)

I once was a stranger

to grace and to God,

I knew not my danger,

and felt not my load;

though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree,

Jehovah Tsidkenu was nothing to me.

I oft read with pleasure,

to soothe or engage,

Isaiah's wild measure

and John's simple page;

but e'en when they pictured the blood-sprinkled tree,

Jehovah Tsidkenu seemed nothing to me.

Like tears from the daughters

of Zion that roll,

I wept when the waters

went over his soul

yet thought not that my sins had nailed to the tree,

Jehovah Tsidkenu – 't was nothing to me.

When free grace awoke me,

by light from on high,

then legal fears shook me,

I trembled to die;

no refuge, no safety in self could I see –

Jehovah Tsidkenu my Saviour must be.

My terrors all vanished

before the sweet name;

my guilty fears banished,

with boldness I came

to drink at the fountain, life-giving and free –

Jehovah Tsidkenu is all things to me.

Jehovah Tsidkenu!

my treasure and boast,

Jehovah Tsidkenu!

I ne'er can be lost;

in thee I shall conquer

by flood and by field –

my cable, my anchor,

my breastplate and shield!

E'en treading the valley,

the shadow of death,

this "watchword" shall rally

my faltering breath;

for while from life's fever my God sets me free,

Jehovah Tsidkenu my death-song shall be.