This Is My Father’s World – August 03, 2008

Maltbie Babcock of Syracuse, New York, probably could have had any job he wanted. He was a brilliant scholar, an outstanding athlete, a dynamic leader, and a gifted musician. Some thought he was the most talented student Syracuse University had ever seen.

Choosing to bless others with his gifts, Babcock became a pastor. He began his ministry in the picturesque Great Lakes region of western New York. Though he loved his job, it could never seem to keep him indoors on a beautiful day. Besides, he felt that it was in nature that he could best commune with God. “Telling his secretary, ‘I’m going out to see my Father’s world,’ he would run or hike a couple of miles into the countryside where he’d lose himself in nature.”[1]Babcock expressed his feelings about life, nature, and deity in beautiful poetry, including a verse he called “This Is My Father’s World.”

When he was 42 years old, he left for an overseas pilgrimage and died suddenly from a bacterial fever. His grief-stricken wife, Catherine, honored his memory by collecting his writings and publishing many of them. A close friend, Franklin L. Sheppard, arranged a tune to go with “This Is My Father’s World,” which is now a well-known hymn. Babcock never lived to hear his poem performed as a hymn, but his love for God—enhanced by his love of nature—lives on through this song.

Just as we better appreciate a song by becoming acquainted with its author, we better appreciate the beautiful world in which we live by coming to know its Creator. In Babcock’s beloved words:
This is my Father’s world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings the music of the spheres.
This is my Father’s world: I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas;
His hand the wonders wrought.

1 Robert J. Morgan, Then Sings My Soul: 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories (2003), 255.

Program #4117