Safe and Secure from All Alarms

Two men buried their wives on the same day. A letter of consolation became a hymn the world could not stop singing.

In 1887, Anthony Showalter sat down to write to two grieving friends in South Carolina. Reaching for Deuteronomy 33:27 - the eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms - he felt the verse demand to be sung. By that same evening he had a refrain. By year's end, Elisha Hoffman had supplied the stanzas, and the hymn was in print. A century and a half later, it has not stopped.

Safe and Secure from All Alarms is the ninth volume in the Songs of the Redeemed series. Moving phrase by phrase through Hoffman and Showalter's beloved hymn, Elias Hartwell explores the spiritual posture at the heart of the Christian life: leaning. Not striving, not managing, not performing - leaning. On arms that do not tire. On a strength that does not fail. On the everlasting God who is not merely above the pilgrim but underneath.

Here is the fellowship that breaks the loneliness of self-sufficiency. Here is the joy that is divine because it flows from God Himself. Here is the peace that is complete because it rests on a presence, not a circumstance. Here is the answer to every alarm that has kept you standing when you were made to rest.

The arms are underneath. They always have been.