Words: , 1997:

I wrote this hymn in Ju­ly 1997, at the YMCA of the Ozarks, near Po­to­si, Mis­souri, dur­ing a fam­i­ly re­un­ion to cel­e­brate my par­ents’ 50th wed­ding an­ni­ver­sary. I had felt an urge to re­cord the theme of God’s etern­al king­dom, but the words weren’t forth­com­ing. One morn­ing I woke at 5:30 and couldn’t get back to sleep (the on­ly day that I week I rose so ear­ly). In the morn­ing si­lence, I prayed that if God want­ed this hymn wri­tten, He would give me the words. Fol­low­ing that prayer, the lyr­ics gushed out, and the hymn was fin­ished in minutes. Af­ter­ward, I walked along the shore of Sun­nen Lake, mar­vel­ing at the beau­ty around me: a qui­et mist shroud­ing the wa­ter, the bright orange sun climb­ing over green hills, Can­a­da geese fly­ing low across the lake. I mused about how long na­ture had been like this, com­pared to man’s short stay on earth. God’s per­spec­tive and time span are so much larg­er than ours, it is awe­some to con­tem­plate.

The first known pub­lic per­form­ance of this hymn was at Unit­ed Meth­od­ist Church of the Ser­vant, Feb­ru­ary 24, 2002.

Music: Bun­es­san, tra­di­tion­al Gae­lic mel­o­dy.