Last summer, an email arrived at Hymnary.org from Germany. A woman there was working on a translation project and was looking for an English translation of “Ich steh in meines Herren Hand” by Philipp Spitta. Interestingly, she was translating the diaries of a German woman at the request of her grandson. The grandson had moved with his parents to America, and shortly after their arrival both parents died. The newly orphaned boy was raised by an American family and soon forgot how to speak German. Now he is learning about his family’s history through the diaries he inherited from his grandmother.
Spitta’s hymn was especially meaningful to his grandmother during the turbulence of the war, and through the process of researching the hymn, I’ve fallen in love with it, too. Here is my new tune for Richard Massie’s English translation, “I Place Myself in Jesus’ Hand“: MP3, PDF.
If you have not yet found a translation, get a copy of the Zion’s Harp, it is a great source of many older hymns.
Thanks for the suggestion, Joel. Do you have a link to an online version? I’m finding a number of different hymnals called “Zion’s Harp” and they seem to be very different. What version do you recommend?