Every year at the annual meeting, we sing “O God, our help in ages past,” set to the tune “St. Anne.” The words, a paraphrase of Psalm 90 written by Isaac Watts, are so familiar by now that they can go by without our noticing them—but they are worth noticing. For me, they speak comfortingly of God’s unchanging nature in an impermanent world, with strong, vivid names for God: “help,” “hope,” “shelter,” “guide” and “home.”

The third verse in particular is about God’s unchanging nature: “Before the hills in order stood, or earth received her frame, from everlasting thou art God, to endless years the same.” I find peace in this thought, because our lives seem to be constantly in transition, and it can seem sometimes that we can never quite get our feet under us before the ground shifts again. What can we hold on to? Isaac Watts tells us that, no matter the circumstance, we can reach out to God and know who that is with perfect certainty. “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.”

Jay Lane