Confirmation comes around each year as students confirm the faith into which they were baptized and promise to cling to that faith by God's grace until death. This celebration is filled with hymns that rejoice in the student’s confirmation and give praise to the Lord for keeping watch over them. As you prepare for confirmation services, consider the three hymns below. Each one has a historical connection to confirmation that you can read about with excerpts from Lutheran Service Book: Companion to the Hymns.
O Gracious Lord, with Love Draw Near (LSB 599)
Like many hymns by Stephen Starke (b. 1955), “O gracious Lord, with love draw near” was written for a particular occasion, in this case, the confirmation of Starke’s niece, Elizabeth Eva Wright, and her classmates. Thus the hymn was first sung by a congregation on May 4, 2003, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
About the Text
The hymn is a prayer offered by the congregation on behalf of those being confirmed. In stanza 1, worshipers see the Lord’s “children gathered here”—a class of eager, perhaps nervous, teenagers, seated in the front pews, likely in new suits and dresses but covered with borrowed white robes. Stanzas 1 and 2 together recall the confirmands’ Baptisms. “The gift of faith that clings” to the Lord was given at Baptism, and the prayer that the Spirit would renew this gift asks for a continuation of that original “washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5). It was Baptism that began God’s work in the young people, uniting them to Christ, “for in that pure baptismal flood they have been cleansed by Jesus’ blood” (stanza 2). The decision not to offer a “Confirmation” section in LSB but to subsume such hymns under “Baptismal Life” is noteworthy: it emphasizes the nexus between Baptism and confirmation as the catechumens publicly confess their baptismal faith and state their intention to remain steadfast in this confession by the power of God’s grace; and it militates against a false understanding of confirmation: that it is “graduation day,” or the time for a new commitment, or some other complement to a previously incomplete faith.
Thine Forever, God of Love (LSB 687)
Not a great deal is known about Mary Fawler Maude (1819–1913), the author of “Thine forever, God of love.” What we do know about the origin of this text does, though, come from the author herself. Maude, the wife of the minister of the parish church of St. Thomas, Newport, on the Isle of Wight, was much involved in a flourishing Sunday School in the parish. Because of sickness, she was separated for three months from her class of confirmation-age girls. This text, which she said came to her almost effortlessly, was included in one of the twelve letters she wrote to her students in her absence, letters which were subsequently published in a booklet in 1848. She was later surprised to find her text contained in a new hymnal. Further fame came to her text when it was chosen by Queen Victoria to be sung at the confirmation of her daughter.
About the Text
Stanza 1 prayerfully implores the God of love to keep the Christian forever in His gracious care. While not directly stated, there is in this stanza a hint of the imagery of the one Shepherd and His flock, described in John 10, in which the Christian has the promise of being kept eternally safe from that one who would try to pull him out of the Father’s gracious hands.
Stanza 2 appeals to the love of the Savior. He in whom rest is ultimately found is also the One who defends the Christian right up to the end. The same theme is carried into stanza 3. The Lord of Life and Love is likewise the One who protects the Christian through all earthly strife. Jesus, in John’s Gospel, describes Himself as “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). The very same One guides the Christian through life’s adversities to that eternal home where all adversity vanishes.
Christians are weak and vulnerable, and they stand in constant need of care. Stanza 4 addresses that need. In Christ, they have the Good Shepherd, the One who does all things to keep them safe. What is more, the Good Shepherd even shares all His goodness, all the riches of His eternal inheritance, with His sheep, who will partake of His eternal life. Stanza 5 speaks of the Lord who promises faithfully to guide His dear sheep. He will see to their every need, forgiving all their sin, surely their greatest need. And He lights the way to the heavenly joy and peace that is faith’s sure and certain hope.
Let Me Be Thine Forever (LSB 689)
[Nicolaus] Selnecker draws the one who sings this hymn into an intimate conversation with God, confessing the desire to belong to the one who is God and Lord and who is typified fundamentally by His faithfulness. His faithfulness creates and renews our faithfulness. Believers can count on Him, for, as Paul told Timothy, God will be faithful even when we are unfaithful because it is His very nature—He cannot deny Himself—to be faithful to His promises to His chosen people (2 Timothy 2:13). We do, however, wish to be faithful to Him in return, and so we pray here that God will preserve us in trusting Him and His Word. Only through God’s grace is that possible for us since we are continually combating the temptation to look to other gods.
About the Text
The second and third stanzas, added for the publication of the hymn in 1688, transform Selnecker’s simple prayer into a confession of the Trinity. Stanza 2 confesses Jesus as Lord and Savior, describing Him with a number of biblical titles, namely light, life, and consolation. The prayer continues by asking for Jesus’ aid in remaining faithful and in His possession. For Christ has won us through His suffering and death; He has come to seek and find the lost whom His Father has sent Him to gather. He does all this so that they might have eternal life. The third stanza confesses the Holy Spirit as comforter and guide, who bestows the faith that clings to the work and benefits of Christ. We ask that the Holy Spirit strengthen us to confess Christ throughout life and into death. Thus, the hymn becomes a prayer for everyday use that at the same time prepares us for our last hours on earth.
Find music for confirmation and more special services in the Lutheran Service Book: Pew Edition hymnal.
.jpg?width=50&height=50&name=IMG_20220621_160541_456%20(1).jpg)