“Thanks for Roses by the wayside, thanks for thorns their stems contain.” (Hymnal, 657)

There are two roses remaining on my desk corner in a parched vase. It seems that just overnight they shriveled up. It seems that their beautiful purpose is lost, and they ought to be disposed of. But I’m sitting with them for a bit, looking at them and contemplating the beauty of their expression, even now — at least in their witness to life’s sorrows, sadness, grief and losses.

The old hymn, “Thanks to God for My Redeemer” (Hymnal 657) reinforces this. The late J. Irving Erickson writes that “there are very few songs of Swedish heritage that have been more popular than ‘Tack, O Gud, for vad du (som) varit.’ The lyrics were written by August Ludvig Storm, a Salvation Army officer in 1891. Each line of the four stanzas begins with the word “thanks” and states one thing for which the author expresses gratitude to God. But in the words of Oscar Lovgren, ‘There are no cheap commodities in the thirty-two thanks found in the song.'” Indeed! Storm thanks God for “dark and dreary fall” as well as “pleasant, balmy springtime”; for “pain” as well as ‘pleasure”; for “thorns” that roses bear as well as their lovely flowers. Such is life, no?

Erickson goes on to relay that the context of this hymn is a sudden and severe back ailment that left August painfully and permanently crippled. He must have sat and seen one hard day what I do now, that thorny stems are much easier to notice — they claim my attention — when the flower and fragrance have faded, and the leaves lay limp.

Why does he say “thanks” for thorns, and why should I? It simply can’t be that he couldn’t be thankful for his accident, or that it left him crippled and in constant pain. But what then could the thanks be about? Maybe that somehow the thorns on the stems gave him an image to help him express his pain and sorrow, AND, AND along with that lament a deep abiding sense that his Heavenly Father was with him in his grief and sadness.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 finds Paul writing to his church friends: “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” He does not admonish them to be thankful FOR everything, but IN everything find a reason for rejoicing — and that “thanks” need not be any schmaltzy kind of denial of reality, but instead gratitude for the chance to be honest about the circumstances of life at the moment, and through it all God’s presence and promises to hold us.

So, at least for a little while, the roses will remain. And I will seek after a thankful heart, come what may.

Peter Hawkinson

Thanks to God for my Redeemer, thanks for all thou dost provide! Thanks for times now but a memory, thanks for Jesus by my side! Thanks for pleasant balmy springtime, thanks for dark and dreary fall!  Thanks for tears by now forgotten, thanks for peace within my soul!

Thanks for prayers that thou hast answered, thanks for what thou dost deny! Thanks for storms that I have weathered, thanks for all thou dost supply! Thanks for pain and thanks for pleasure, thanks for comfort in despair! Thanks for grace that none can measure, thanks for love beyond compare!

Thanks for Roses by the wayside, thanks for thorns their stems contain! Thanks for home and thanks for fireside, thanks for hope, that sweet refrain! Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow, thanks for heavenly peace with thee! Thanks for hope in the tomorrow, thanks through all eternity!

Words: August Living Storm, 1862-1914, translated by Carl Backstrom, 1901-1984.        Music: J.A. Hultmann, 1861-1942