#629: Abide with Me

[lutheranhymns]

This song is noteworthy for two reasons. One, it has a lot of beautiful texts about asking God to be with us in both life and death. Only God is unchanging, unlike the inconstant Earth, but because God is with us, we can ask "Where is death's sting?" (from 1 Corinthians, which it looks like is actually a callback to Hosea, but Paul's rhetorical questioning is much better-known). Because of this, the hymn lends itself well to obituaries, my grandmother's family used it for hers.

The other reason this song is famous is because ninety-three years ago, British soccer fans thought it would be a great choice to sing at their soccer cup/bracket final and they liked it so much they've done so ever since.

British soccer fans are weird.