This Is My Father’s World
This Is My Father’s World
This is my Father’s world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas—
His hand the wonders wrought.
This is my Father’s world,
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,
Declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.
This is my Father’s world,
O let me ne’er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the Ruler yet.
This is my Father’s world:
The battle is not done;
Jesus who died shall be satisfied,
And earth and heav’n be one.
MALTBIE BABCOCK was an athlete. An outstanding baseball pitcher and a champion swimmer, he kept himself in shape by running. When he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Lockport, New York, he would run out in the early morning to the brow of the hill two miles away and look over at Lake Ontario. Before he left, he would tell his church staff, “I am going out to see my Father’s world.” From the brow of the hill, he would run two more miles to a deep ravine where as many as forty different species of birds found a sanctuary. Then he would run back.
Babcock loved athletics and nature, as well as playing music on the organ, piano, and violin. So it was not strange that he should write a hymn extolling God’s handiwork in nature.
The Lord merely spoke, and the heavens were created. He breathed the word, and all the stars were born. He assigned the sea its boundaries and locked the oceans in vast reservoirs. Let the whole world fear the Lord, and let everyone stand in awe of him.
Psalm 33:6-8
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