Lord, It Belongs Not To My Care
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 soar to endless day?
Christ leads me through no darker rooms
Than He went through before;
He that into God’s kingdom comes
Must enter by this door.
Come, Lord, when grace hath made me meet
Thy blessed face to see;
For if Thy work on earth be sweet,
What will Thy glory be?
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.
FROM THIS HYMN and the books he wrote, like The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, it would be easy to assume that Richard Baxter was a docile gentleman who lived quietly in a British country manor. But that was far from the case for this seventeenth-century English clergyman.
At the age of seventy, Baxter was brought before a judge and accused of writing a paraphrase of the New Testament. The judge called him “an old rogue, a hypocritical villain, a fanatical dog, and a sniveling Presbyterian.” He proceeded to have Baxter whipped and jailed in the Tower of London.
This hymn was written as an expansion of Philippians 1:21—“For to me, living means living for Christ, and dying is even better.” It was dedicated to Baxter’s wife, who had died a few years earlier after a long and painful illness. Baxter’s life was full of constant struggle, but he was content to leave matters in the hands of the Lord.
I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation. . . . For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.
Philippians 4:11-13
From the book
