It’s one thing to write a song about rejoicing when all is well and the future looks bright. It’s quite another to sing of rejoicing while enduring violence and persecution—as did William W. Phelps in Missouri in 1833. He wrote “Now Let Us Rejoice” against a backdrop of “defeat, frustration, homelessness, suffering, privation, [and] hunger.”1
At a time when others may have had difficulty finding any good at all, William W. Phelps declared, “Good tidings are sounding to us and each nation.”2 Like William Phelps and so many others, we too can refuse to be defeated by our circumstances. Even in the worst of times, we can look with faith to the future; we can hold on to the hope of a coming day of peace and joy.
Indeed, the trials we endure can be the very reason we recognize the good around us. Most often our sorrows make possible our rejoicings. If we never experience sadness, we never can know happiness. If we never feel pain, we cannot know relief. If we never face heartache, we cannot know a fullness of joy.
In a heart furrowed by sorrow and suffering, seeds of faith can grow into spiritual maturity. As Isaiah taught so long ago, the Lord will help us through the hard times: “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned. . . . Fear not: for I am with thee.”3 Knowing this gives us reason to rejoice. If we patiently look to the Lord for succor and strength, “the hour of redemption will come.”4
Program #3971
1. George D. Pyper, in Karen Lynn Davidson, Our Latter-day Hymns: The Stories and the Messages (1988), 32.
2. “Now Let Us Rejoice,” Hymns, no.3.
3. Isaiah 43:2, 5.
4. “Now Let Us Rejoice”; italics added.