Lyrics
Give to the winds thy fears;
Hope, and be undismayed;
God hears thy sighs and counts thy tears,
God shall lift up thy head.
Through waves and clouds and storms,
He gently clears thy way;
Wait thou His time; so shall this night
Soon end in joyous day.
Still heavy is thy heart?
Still sinks thy spirit down?
Cast off the world, let fear depart
Bid every care begone.
What though thou rulest not;
Yet heaven, and earth, and hell
Proclaim, God sitteth on the throne,
And ruleth all things well.
And whatsoe'er thou wilt,
Thou dost, O King of kings;
What Thine unerring wisdom chose,
Thy power to being brings.
Leave to His sovereign sway
To choose and to command;
So shalt thou, wondering, own that way,
How wise, how strong this hand.
Far, far above thy thought,
His counsel shall appear,
When fully He the work hath wrought,
That caused thy needless fear.
Thou seest our weakness, Lord;
Our hearts are known to Thee;
O lift Thou up the sinking hand,
Confirm the feeble knee!
Let us in life, in death,
Thy steadfast truth declare,
And publish with our latest breath
Thy love and guardian care.
Public domain hymn text (1656; English translation 1739). Words by Paul Gerhardt, translated by John Wesley.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Paul Gerhardt wrote the original text underlying 'Give to the Winds Thy Fears' in 1656, drawing loosely on Psalm 37's instruction to 'commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him.'
Gerhardt lived through the Thirty Years' War and its aftermath, and later endured the deaths of several of his own children, circumstances that give his repeated hymn writing about trust amid genuine difficulty particular weight drawn from lived experience.
John Wesley translated the full text into English in 1739, and its nine verses trace an unusually complete arc, from the initial command to release fear, through honest acknowledgment that the heart may still 'sink,' to confident trust in God's 'unerring wisdom' and final resolve to declare that trust 'with our latest breath.'
Its later verses repeatedly insist that God governs even what looks unresolved or hidden, promising that His 'counsel shall appear' fully only once His work is 'wrought,' asking the singer to trust the process rather than only the eventual outcome.
The hymn's closing verse turns from personal comfort to lifelong commitment, asking that this same trust be declared 'in life, in death,' extending the hymn's opening comfort into a promise meant to last the singer's whole life.
Wesley's translation work brought numerous German hymns into the developing Methodist tradition during the movement's earliest years, and this text became one of several Gerhardt hymns that found lasting, wide use through his English rendering.
