Lyrics
In heavenly love abiding,
No change my heart shall fear;
And safe is such confiding,
For nothing changes here.
The storm may roar without me,
My heart may low be laid;
But God is round about me,
And can I be dismayed?
Wherever He may guide me,
No want shall turn me back;
My Shepherd is beside me,
And nothing can I lack.
His wisdom ever waketh,
His sight is never dim;
He knows the way He taketh,
And I will walk with Him.
Green pastures are before me,
Which yet I have not seen;
Bright skies will soon be o'er me,
Where darkest clouds have been.
My hope I cannot measure,
My path to life is free;
My Savior is my treasure,
And He will walk with me.
Public domain hymn text (1850). Words by Anna L. Waring.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Anna L. Waring was a Welsh poet who came from a Quaker family, before later joining the Church of England as an adult. She wrote this hymn’s text in 1850.
It was part of a comparatively small published body of hymn writing — she wrote and published far fewer hymns over her lifetime than many of the more prolific writers represented elsewhere in this collection. Yet several of her hymns, including this one, achieved lasting and widespread popularity, despite her modest overall output.
Waring was known among those who knew her personally for actively visiting prisons and working directly with incarcerated women. It was a practical charitable commitment she maintained over many years, alongside her writing.
Several of her hymns, including this one, reflect a consistent theme of finding settled inward peace specifically amid outward circumstances that remain difficult or unchanged — language that carried particular resonance, given her own direct, ongoing exposure to the genuinely difficult circumstances of the imprisoned women she regularly visited.
The hymn’s central claim is that inward security can remain entirely undisturbed, even while ‘the storm may roar without.’ That reflects a theological emphasis on the believer’s inward relationship with God as fundamentally independent of, rather than reliant upon, favorable external circumstances.
It was a message Waring appears to have tested directly against her own repeated encounters with genuine hardship and confinement through her prison visiting work, rather than developing the idea only as an abstract devotional theme.
The hymn has remained a favored choice specifically for funerals and other occasions calling for quiet reassurance amid difficult circumstances.
Its author’s own comparatively small published output — a handful of widely loved hymns, rather than the thousands produced by writers like Fanny Crosby or Charles Wesley elsewhere in this collection — stands as a reminder that lasting influence in hymnody has never depended strictly on sheer volume of output.
