The Altar

In 1900, Elisha Hoffman wrote the hymn we know as "Is Your All on the Altar".  This song was sung at our school's recent high school graduation, and it has not left my mind since.  The tune keeps creeping into my head, and I wonder if it is God speaking to my heart?

Elisha Hoffman was an interesting man.  I had to look up his biography as I wanted to get to know the man whose song is currently driving me to think deeper about my life and God's plan for it. 

Mr. Hoffman lived to be 90 years old, from 1839 to 1929.  He was the son of a minister and accepted Jesus as his Savior at a young age.  He experienced the Civil War period, and his first wife died after just 8 years of marriage, leaving him with 3 little boys.  He worked for a Presbyterian publishing house but was also ordained and worked as a pastor most of his life.  Though not musically trained, he wrote 2,000 songs and hymns (you would probably recognize many of them if you've been in church for any amount of time)!  He did remarry and enjoyed a long life with his second wife and their daughter. 

His hymn of surrender begins with the question I have asked myself a lot (in my own way) recently:

Have you longed for sweet peace and for faith to increase
(yes, yes, I have!)
and have earnest, fervently prayed,
(often - that God would show me what I am doing wrong, asking His help to control my thoughts and emotions.)
But you cannot have rest or be perfectly blest
Until all on the altar is laid.
(I've laid a lot of things on the altar in the last few years, but I know I am still hanging on to a few areas that I struggle with letting go)

Is your all on the altar of sacrifice laid?
Your heart does the Spirit control?
(As Christians we believe we have the Holy Spirit living inside us, but how much do we  listen to Him?  How easy it is to suppress Him because I don't think God forces Himself on anyone!)
You can only be blest,
And have peace and sweet rest,
As you yield Him your body and soul.
(I know I am blessed - God's been better to me than I ever deserve ... but the peace and rest are sometimes lacking ... Is it because I haven't totally yielded Him my body and soul?)

Oh, we never can know

What the Lord will bestow
Of the blessings for which we have prayed,
Till our body and soul
He doth fully control,
And our all on the altar is laid.


Who can tell all the love
He will send from above,
And how happy our hearts will be made;
Of the fellowship sweet
We shall share at His feet,
When our all on the altar is laid.

Giving up control is not easy for me ... to fully rely on a person to take care of me is hard, to trust in a God I don't always understand is even harder.  Blame it on my childhood, blame it on my past experiences, blame my cynical nature ... but something inside me balks at giving God EVERYTHING, trusting Him to take care of things I have no control over anyway.  While I know He has never failed me, I sometimes wonder why I can't just trust Him more completely for my future. 

I guess human nature makes us all want to be independent; the world tells us we have power within, to take charge of our own destiny ... and while I don't like or believe the propaganda, I fear I've formed my own self-sufficient way of thinking and acting.  Some people are easier going about surrendering control, but for us control freaks, it isn't quite as simple.   And yet, day by day, step by step, God is working, dealing gently, softening up the hardened heart, and even when I don't understand, asking me to lay everything on the altar before Him. 

Conny