Time&Eternity

32 chapter 1
in Zeit und Ewigkeit.
Die Tore stehen offen.
Das Land ist hell und weit. 120
Thus, surrendering before the future has gradually given way to the
effort to grasp it. In the process of grasping, people have been increasingly
forced to experience the threat of the future. To the same extent that a person
wishes to grasp the future, it eludes that person by moving into the
realm of the threatened and the threatening. For this reason, the struggle to
grasp the future increasingly became a struggle to seize on hope. During the
1990s, much thought was given to the unity of hope and the future. Svein
Ellingsen’s hymn on the topic of “responsibility for the earth” exemplifies
this beautifully:
Ännu är hoppet en brinnande gnista .l.l.
Drömmen och hoppet slår rot i vårt hjärta .l.l.
Framtiden lever: En framtid för jorden!
Hopplöshet viker och dag följer natt. 121
In another hymn, the hopeful grasping for the future of a healed world
paradoxically leads back to the beginnings of time:
En gång i tidens morgon är jorden ny,
luften är renad och sjöbottnen synbar .l.l. 122
It is unclear why the morning of time coincides here with the fulfillment
of God’s saving grace, which, in the world’s view, is still to come. Nevertheless,
there appears to be a blending of the past and the future in a vision
of salvation.
“Heut schleußt er wieder auf die Tür” 123
—Contemporizing the Past
Christmas and Easter hymns treat time in a particularly striking way. In
these hymns, the past event of Christ’s birth or resurrection is contemporized
by an emphasis on “today.”
“Uns zum Heil erkoren, ward er heut geboren, heute uns geboren” 124
(Elected to be our salvation, he was born today, born to us today)—this
message in the refrain of a Christmas hymn from the mid-nineteenth century
is echoed in numerous other hymns. Although many Christmas carols
were written during the nineteenth century, the programmatic “today” is
also found in hymns and carols of other epochs. “Heute geht aus seiner
Kammer Gottes Held, der die Welt reißt aus allem Jammer” 125 (Today,
God’s hero, who saves the world from all misery, leaves his chamber) and
“[h]eut schleußt er wieder auf die Tür zum schönen Paradeis [sic]” 126 (To-