He had been in this world for just a few moments when I picked him up in my arms and sang to my newborn son a song, a hymn. “I am Jesus’ little lamb...” A familiar hymn, a childhood hymn, I thought. But then I arrived at the third stanza. I held in my arms that life, just a few hours old, and I sang, “And when my short life is ended / By his angel hosts attended / He shall fold me to his breast / There within his arms to rest.” I looked down and through the tears I laid my eyes on little son and I thought about that hymn in a new way. “And when my short life is ended...” and I knew that the author was correct. Here is this life, lying in my arms, just moments old, but he isn’t immortal. He is headed to the same destination that I am and that all of us are. Soon this short life will be ended. Maybe seventy or eighty years, maybe a few more, but we lie to ourselves if we pretend that death doesn’t exist. That would be a terribly depressing thought if it weren’t for the hope that we Christians have. The author of that hymn understood what we also understand: that Christ’s life on this earth was by all accounts short and that it ended rather abruptly. Yet behind the shadow of death there was life; Jesus rose again. Now he lives. If he isn’t living, then how could he do such things as send his angel hosts to attend us when we die or to bring us to his side to rest within his arms? How much more powerful to sing that hymn, then, and to realize that even though the life we bring into this world will someday die, death isn’t the last word. Behind the ending of this short life awaits the unending life with our Lord Jesus. We will rest in his arms there and taste eternity in all of its unfathomable greatness. That gives us Christians the guts to hold a newborn in the arm and sing, “And when my short life is ended” and even think, “and that’s ok, because then we’ll be with Jesus, forever.” It must be something about the marriage of a text and a tune that makes a good hymn such a powerful proclamation of the gospel. But then it seems to me that it’s also the circumstances in which we sing the hymn that shade our appreciation of its message. I don’t think I’ll ever sing “I am Jesus’ little lamb” again without thinking about that moment in the hospital. I could fill many more pages with other hymns and the connections they bear in my mind, but I don’t need to. I suspect that you know what I’m talking about from your own experience. Good hymns are faithful companions on our journey heavenward, are they not?