We Launch Away

Found here

I have rarely been so taken by song lyrics as I have by these:

There is a land of pure delight,Where saints immortal reign,

Infinite day excludes the night,And pleasures banish pain.

There everlasting spring abides,And never withering flowers:

Death, like a narrow sea, dividesThis heav’nly land from ours.
Sweet fields beyond the swelling floodStand dressed in living green:

So to the Jews old Canaan stood,While Jordan rolled between.
But timorous mortals start and shrinkTo cross this narrow sea;

And linger, shivering on the brink,And fear to launch away.

O could we make our doubts remove,Those gloomy thoughts that rise,

And see the Canaan that we loveWith unbeclouded eyes!
Could we but climb where Moses stood,And view the landscape o’er,

Not Jordan’s stream, nor death’s cold flood,Should fright us from the shore.

Written by Isaac Watt in 1707, this song captures the reliance on the forward-looking attitude of the settlers in America. Life expectancy was much shorter than it is today: 35 - 40 at the most. I would be dead by now, were I a Puritan.

Going back through the old cemeteries of New England, the focus of people on the heavenly realm was readily evident. Death was a daily experience. So many women died in childbirth. A simple cold could progress to pneumonia and death, without antibiotics. A puncture wound from a nail would turn into lockjaw and subsequent death. It was not infrequent to sit at the bedside of people who were dying, without the technology that we have today. It was a process of fever, delirium, coma, and death. People could just drift off to "eternal rest." Therefore, these individuals realized that it was important to focus on what came after death in order to survive emotionally.

This is the context of Isaac Watt's lyrics.

It is also quite possibly why I feel closer to God at a funeral than almost at any other time. The current chapter of the story is over. The little soul is resting until the Resurrection, when they shall stand in the sight of God. Or, as our Pilgrim parents believed, "launched away."

I've been driving around singing this along with the recording of Early American hymns that has this on it. Every day, my heart swells and I too, become future-oriented. What we experience here isn't the end of the story. While our Puritan parents were living in the most austere circumstances and dying quickly from now-treatable medical problems, they learned to look forward. We too, gain much for looking for that Great Day. May we not be timorous souls, but hearty lives, straining ahead for that perfect Land.