"Thy bountiful care, what tongue can recite?"

Hymn: “O Worship the King” – Robert Grant (1779-1838)

Tunes: LYONS, HANOVER

In 1985 in the town where I live, The Trip to Bountiful was filmed. Right here on the streets of Waxahachie, Texas, Geraldine Page wandered about as Carrie Watts, in search of her fictional home town: Bountiful. She won a best-actress Academy Award for her portrayal… and Cynthia Clawson was nominated for her singing of “Softly and Tenderly.”

I never get to this third stanza without recalling that year when all the movie trucks came to town and disrupted the normal day-to-day pace-- because in 1985, Main Street in Waxahachie looked like Houston looked in the early 1950’s when the action was supposed to have been taking place. Gee, I love living in a quaint little town… I really do. Ah, yes. (Snap out of it, Huff. You have a blog to complete.)

Most of us would like to return to the bountiful care of our childhood… even if our home town is not called Bountiful. Those days of constant watchful protection: who can put it into words? According to this hymn-writer, it can’t be done. The vastness of God’s provision for us is such that it cannot adequately be verbalized. Instead, it is dramatized for us in creation itself:

            It breathes in the air.

            It shines in the light.

            It streams from the hills.

            It descends to the plain.

            It sweetly distills in the dew and the rain.

The generous care of the Holy One works quietly in oxygen and in brightness; it gushes down from the hillside, like a flood rushing through a canyon toward the flatlands; it sweetly lands upon parched places in the form of dew and rainfall. And we stand, awaiting its affects because we are frail, feeble children of dust.

Head back to Bountiful today. Sit on the platform outside the local warehouse. Drive out in the country to the tumbled-down homeplace. Recall the days gone by, and believe with all certainty that the bountiful care still abounds!

Originally Posted 08/24/2013

Listen to a contemporary mash up of this hymn with a chorus:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wgDPdTy5Tg