August 28, 2024
Hymn Showcase: We’ll Live In Tents
“Strangers and Pilgrims on the earth. For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country.” – Hebrews 11:13-14
Words and music by Horatio Gates Spafford
Found in Christ In Song (1908), Hymn #483
The pioneers of the faith well knew that our time on this earth was merely a pilgrimage – our true home is elsewhere. Their patterns were Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who followed wherever Yehovah led them.
These verses offer us an opportunity to critique and compare our own approach to this earthly life.
Links
Link on hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/hymn/CSR1908/483
Video
Edmond Saint-Jean performed: We’ll live in tents. 03-07-2018
Four part piano accompaniment; he plays one verse, one chorus, then repeats the chorus.
Text/Lyrics
Verse 1
God bids his people on the earth,
Before he comes and calls them hence
To live unknit to home and hearth,
Like far-bound travelers—in tents.
Chorus
We’ll live in tents until our feet
Shall reach the land by sin untrod,
The gate of pearl, the golden street,
Whose Builder and whose Maker, God.
Verse 2
It is his will that we should pass
Like strangers, sep’rate and aside
From all the vain and worldly mass
That crowd the Babylons of pride.
Verse 3
He’d have us rear no stately towers,
Sink no foundation walls of stone,
But camp each night a few short hours,
And ere the morrow’s dawn move on.
Verse 4
O brother, whatsoever chain
Binds us to fleshly lust and strife,
Here let us rend it in God’s name,
And live henceforth, the pilgrim life.
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