1 Father, when in love to Thee
Low we bow the adoring knee,
When repentant to the skies
Scarcely do we lift our eyes.
Then, O hear us as we plead
For Thy help in time of need;
Bending from Thy throne on high,
Hear, forgive us when we cry.
2 We repent the times we've stood
For the things of lesser good,
And for stewardship of time
We have spent unlinked with Thine,
In the midst of sin and strife,
Teach us how to live a life
Marked by graces of new birth,
Worthy of Thy saints on earth.
3 Father, while we look to Thee,
Lowly on the bended knee,
And in penitence we turn,
For Thy pardon now we yearn.
Reconcile us by Thy love;
Lift our souls to things above;
As we humbly now draw nigh,
Hear, forgive us when we cry.
Amen.
Robert Grant (b. Bengal, India, 1779; d. Dalpoorie, India, 1838) was influenced in writing this text by William Kethe’s paraphrase of Psalm 104 in the Anglo-Genevan Psalter (1561). Grant’s text was first published in Edward Bickersteth’s Christian Psalmody (1833) with several unauthorized alterations. In 1835 his original six-stanza text was published in Henry Elliott’s Psalm and Hymns (The original stanza 3 was omitted in Lift Up Your Hearts).
Of Scottish ancestry, Grant was born in India, where his father was a director of the East India Company. He attended Magdalen College, Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1807. He had a distinguished public career a Governor of Bombay and as a member of the British Parliament, where… Go to person page >
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