Heaven Is All Around You: a song for bedtime
Similarly to most small children, I was scared of the dark. My mom and dad would tuck me into bed and pray with me. They would then proceed to slowly inch out of the room, shut off the lights, and whisper a faint “sleep tight” while gently closing the bedroom door. After the conclusion of this bedtime ritual, a very real and present fear would slowly start to emerge in my mind. Darkness was upon me, and darkness represented the unknown. My imagination would attempt to fill the undeniable void with my repertoire of horror-genre studies compiled from watching television, reading the “Goosebumps” book series, and hearing the apocalyptic drama from the “Left Behind” books.
photo by Pelly Benassi (@solidpixel)
Historically, the church has attributed theological language to the cycle of daytime and nighttime through it’s prayers and songs. The canonical hours (or the Divine Offices) are prescribed liturgies of prayer scheduled at certain times during the day. This not only functions as way to monastically structure the day around prayer, but also to live into St. Paul’s direction of “praying without ceasing”. [1] Each of these offices of prayer has a centralized theme around the life and work of Christ. The office of prayer before bedtime (called Compline) uses the image of sleep to talk metaphorically about death while looking ahead to the promise of resurrection as represented in the first morning hour of prayer (called Matins).
The theology in the services of Compline is marvelously displayed in some of the old evening hymns of the Christian tradition. The hours of evening are a symbol of sin and death and are held in tension with the cosmic realm of Divine protection. The following are stanzas from a hymnal published in 1930 given to me by my grandmother:
Example 1:
Let mercy fall on us like dew
And angel pinions play
Around us while the hours of night
In silence pass away [2]
Example 2:
We rest secure beneath Thy hand
Protector of our home and land
To guard Thy children’s peaceful rest
Around them stand Thine angels blest [3]
Example 3:
Through the long night-watches
May Thine angels spread
Their white wings above me
Watching round my bed [4]
These hymns are all saturated with antiquated theology and for the most part would not find a place in our worship today, but we can still learn a great deal from them.
If I had a child, the singular theological truth-claim I would emphasize over and over to them would be God is fully present with us. Fully present in the child. Fully present in every other human being. Fully present in nature. Fully present in the unknown. We cannot escape God’s loving care because it is freely given and equally distributed to all.
A few years back, I wrote a song for bedtime keeping with the traditional language of old Compline hymns with a greater emphasis on “God with Us” instead of “god far away in the sky”. Imagining this song being sung to a child, my goal was to musically and poetically communicate the heavenly Presence of God is in the faces and being of those who most purely embody the image of God for the child. For the child cannot conceive of the abstracted version of God we as adults so quickly cling; rather the child sees Love and God as synonymous energies at work in their lives. For where there is Love, there is God.
In our passing from waking to sleeping, we see the protection and love of God in the faces of our most beloved. We see God all around us, and we can be assured that God is acting in ways known and unknown to us. This is the God we take refuge in. Every day and every night, forever and ever.
Heaven is All Around You
a song by Aaron Schultz
Rest securely in your sleep
In the arms of God you'll keep.
Heaven is all around you,
In the face of those who love you.
Sleep my child
Dream your dreams
Close your eyes
See radiant beams...
Heaven is all around you.
Guardian angels of the night
Gift to you a calming light.
Heaven is all around you,
In the face of those who love you.
Sleep my child
Dream your dreams
Close your eyes
See radiant beams...
Heaven is all around you.
Loving God, accept our prayer
Keep us in your tender care.
NOTES:
[1] 1 Thessalonians 5:17
[2] Text: Elizabeth J. Coffin from the hymn “And Now the Sun Has Sunk to Rest”
[3] Text: Franz Mikael Franzen from the hymn “The Day Departs, Yet Thou Art Near”
[4] Text: S. Baring Gould from the hymn “Now the Day is Over, Night is Drawing Nigh”
