No sound except for sighing wind
Psalm 74

This hymn, though founded on Psalm 74, is written from a New Testament perspective. The context is a song of lament, generally presumed to have been aroused by the outpouring of grief in Jerusalem when in 587 BC enemies from Babylon ravaged and burnt down the temple of the LORD which his worshippers had built with elaborate care as his holy dwelling-place. They mourned and asked questions, wanting to know whether they had grieved God so much that he would never return to them. But we know, all these centuries later, that there was a remnant who stayed faithful to him, and that after Jesus Christ his Son ascended to Heaven the temple was replaced by the invisible church where Jesus reins in the hearts of all who acknowledge and belong to him. Meanwhile wars have become even more destructive and widely recorded across the world, and in many places Christians are sorely persecuted (as he warned us would happen). We still await the Day of the LORD to which the close of the psalm refers; but through his Spirit Christ is with his suffering church, as he promise he would always be. He will come again in his glory to reign in justice.