ENTRUST YOUR DAYS AND BURDENS

You can listen to the devotion here. 

Invocation
In the Name of the Father, and (+) of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
​
Scripture
1 Peter 5:6-7
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, 7 casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.

Devotion based on Entrust Your Days and Burdens (LSB 754)
1.  Entrust your days and burdens
        To God's most loving hand;
            He cares for you while ruling
        The sky, the sea, the land.
     For He who guides the tempests
        Along their thund'rous ways
            Will find for you a pathway
        And guide you all your days.
 
2.  Rely on God your Savior
        And find your life secure.
            Make His work your foundation
        That your work may endure.
     No anxious thought, no worry,
        No self-tormenting care
            Can win your Father's favor;
        His heart is moved by prayer.
 
3.  Take heart, have hope, my spirit,
        And do not be dismayed;
            God helps in ev'ry trial
        And makes you unafraid.
     Await His time with patience
        Through darkest hours of night
            Until the sun you hoped for
        Delights your eager sight.
 
4.  Leave all to His direction;
        His wisdom rules for you
            In ways to rouse your wonder
        At all His love can do.
     Soon He, His promise keeping,
        With wonder-working pow'rs
            Will banish from your spirit
        What gave you troubled hours.
 
5.  O bless-ed heir of heaven,
        You'll hear the song resound
            Of endless jubilation
        When you with life are crowned.
     In your right hand your maker
        Will place the victor's palm,
            And you will thank Him gladly
        With heaven's joyful psalm.
 
6.  Our hands and feet, Lord, strengthen
        With joy our spirits bless
            Until we see the ending
        Of all our life's distress.
     And so throughout our lifetime
        Keep us within Your care
            And at our end then bring us
        To heav'n to praise You there.
 
You can listen to the hymn here. 
 
The hymn commentary for today comes from Pastor Jacob Sutton as found in the Lutheran Service Book Companion to the Hymns Volume 1 (edited and modified by me). 
 
Paul Gerhardt wrote many hymns that deal with the comfort, hope, and joy found in relying on God’s providential and saving care of His creation, and this is probably his best known.
Gerhardt faced much distress during his lifetime, and shows that the faith-testing troubles and temptations that fight against the sure and certain promises of God in Jesus Christ for the hearts and souls of believers also affected Gerhardt and shaped the writing of his hymns. By the time he was fourteen, both his parents had died. When he was thirty, his hometown was destroyed by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years’ War…, and in the fall of the same year, his older brother Christian died there of the plague. After writing this hymn, Gerhard would experience the death of his wife and four of his five children.

There is some evidence that the hymn may have been influenced by Psalm 37:5, “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in Him, and He will act” and a poem that Luther wrote on this verse.  As well as influences from Johann Arndt, Leonhard Hutter, and Johann Gerhard.

The hymn is used in Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental St. Matthew Passion (172; BWV 244). Bach also uses the best of Gerhardt’s passion hymns, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” (LSB 449) and “Upon the Cross Extended” (LSB 453), for six different movements. But “Entrust Your Days and Burdens” is the only non-Lenten hymn by Gerhardt used in the work. A recitative from Matthew 27:7-14 concludes when Pilate asks Jesus if He hears how grave the charges being brough against Him are. But the evangelist sings, “But He gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor was greatly amazed.” Immediately thereafter, the chorus sings the first stanza of “Entrust Your Days and Burdens”.

During His trial and Passion, Jesus underwent the ultimate in “tempests” and “thunderous ways” (stanza 1), fully and perfectly committing or entrusting His pathway to His Father in heaven. His silence before Pilate tells us this, Bach seems to say. Jesus does not argue or try to avoid the charges, even though He is innocent, because His Father’s will is that He should bear the burden of the whole world’s sin (1 Peter 5:6-7, 10).  Bach uses Gerhardt’s hymn to say, in light of what our Lord has done for us, that we can now entrust our days and burdens to Him who is God, who is ruling, and who guides all things with His most loving hand, including the sky, the sea, and the land, and who has carried out His plan for the salvation of the world from sin, death, and the devil.
Since Jesus Christ, the Lord, has acted in the office of “your Savior,” the second stanza invites each singer to rely on Him. We find our lives secure on the foundation of Him and His work, and thereupon our work is able to endure (Proverbs 16:3, 9). Looking to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, for Gerhardt there is “no anxious life” (Matthew 6:27). Instead, we can look to our Father in heaven (Matthew 6:9), who knows how to give good things to those who ask Him” (Matthew 7:11), for “His heart is moved by prayer” (stanza 2; Luke 18:7).

As the Lord Jesus in His trail endured all things, and as God encouraged the prophet Elijah, who was pursued by His opponents (1 Kings 19), the third stanza exhorts us to “take heart, have hope…and be not dismayed.” When the dark night of sin is over, the sun for which all Christians have hoped will delight their “eager sight”(Matthew 24:44; 1 Thessalonians 5:2; Revelation 22:5; Malachi 4:1-2). 

Stanza 4 implores the singer to leave all things to Him – to God the Savior. With His “wonder-working powers,” He banishes all that “gave you troubled hours.” For we know that the answers to the question “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Genesis 18:14) can be only “With God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

“Blessed is the heir of heaven,” promises stanza 5, who has been crowned with the crown of eternal life (Revelation 2:10; 3:11; James 1:12; 2 Timothy 4:7-8). God Himself “will place the victor’s palm” (see Revelation 7:9) into the right hands of those who have endured and trusted in Christ. Then a new song will be sung, for “heaven’s joyful psalm” will replace one that merely calls on singers to hope and trust, because the singers will see the Lamb face to face on His throne (Revelation 7:9-12).
In Gerhardt’s original last stanza, the singer cries out, “Make an end, O Lord, make an end to all our distress.” Until we reach the endless jubilation of heaven, which is the “ending of all our life’s distress”, we pray for the Lord to strengthen our hands and feet and to keep us within His care. Gerhardt’s original stanza brings back the idea of the road or way from Psalm 37:5 and the beginning of the hymn so as we go our way to heaven to praise Him there, we ask Him whose “heart is moved by prayer” (stanza 2) to keep the faithful secure in and entrusted to Him who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6; Luke 18:7-8).

Collect
Lord Jesus Christ, help us to entrust our days, our burdens, all our anxieties and cares into Your most loving hands. Amen.