I Know of a Sleep in Jesus’ Name
ELH 525
The best hymns use the full wealth of God’s Word to teach the faith and comfort the conscience. This hymn shows how Scripture teaches in more than one place that death is a sleep. St. Paul calls Christians “those who sleep in Jesus” (1 Thess. 4:14); in the gospel we hear that “all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth” (John 5:28-29); and Jesus said that Jairus’ daughter was “not dead, but sleeping” (Mark 5:39) before He took her by the hand and raised her with His voice.
This hymn brings these things together: “I know of a sleep in Jesus’ name,” we sing in the first verse – when we Christians die, we sleep in Jesus. “He calls out aloud, ‘Ye dead, come forth!’/In glory we rise to meet Him,” we sing in the fifth verse – His voice will wake the dead on the last day. “O Jesus, draw near my dying bed/And take me into Thy keeping,/And say when my spirit hence is fled,/‘This child is not dead but sleeping,’” we sing in the last verse. At our deathbeds, Jesus is there to raise us from death like the daughter of weeping Jairus. Jesus dries our tears as He turned Jairus’ tears from sorrow to joy.
