My Hope Is In the Lord
Composer: Marianne Forman (Beckenhorst Press)
Text: Marianne Forman
Season: Sung March 2, 2025, the Sunday before Lent, Beverly Heights Sanctuary Choir
“My hope is in the Lord” is a sentence the Psalms keep returning to. David asks it as a question in Psalm 39, “And now, Lord, what do I wait for?”, and answers it in the same breath. Psalm 71 traces the hope back to birth: “You are my hope, O Lord God, my trust from my youth.” The New Testament picks the thread up and calls that hope an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast, because it is fastened to a person and not to a prospect.
Marianne Forman’s anthem takes the sentence as its foundation. The choir states it plainly at the opening, builds the rest of the piece on it, and returns to it at the close, so that whatever the music does in between, it ends where it began. It was sung on the last Sunday before Lent in 2025, a fitting place for a declaration of where hope rests before the church walks toward the cross.
Scripture: Psalm 39:7; Psalm 71:5; Hebrews 6:19