Mal Penenne Na Lyrics by Bro. Charles Thomas

No flowers appear to me, nothing is felt by me,
my heart finds no comfort
in a life that bears no fruit, the light lies hidden away

Hidden in the fig tree, the glory told in secret,
Lord, my Lord, the Lord my eyes cannot see,
my God whom I cannot see

Sleepless, through the whole night of life, you keep watch, awake
not to my own sight but to your plan I surrender it, my Lord
in a life that bears no fruit, the light lies hidden away

This is a hymn of faith in the dark, sung by someone in a barren, discouraged season, and it is honest about how that feels. The opening is bleak, “no flowers appear to me, nothing is felt by me, my heart finds no comfort,” and it names the underlying dread, “in a life that bears no fruit, the light lies hidden away.” This is the prayer of a person who feels spiritually empty, seeing no blossom, no result, no sense of God’s nearness.

The middle lines reach for a quiet biblical image, “hidden in the fig tree, the glory told in secret.” In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him “under the fig tree” before they ever met, a moment of being known in a hidden, ordinary place. The song trusts that even now, when nothing seems to be happening, God’s glory is quietly present, “told in secret,” in a God the singer confesses he “cannot see.” Faith here is precisely believing in the God the eyes cannot find.

The turn comes in the final verse, and it is deeply reassuring. “Sleepless, through the whole night of life, you keep watch, awake.” Even when the believer feels nothing, God is not asleep or absent; he is watching through the long night. And so the song ends in surrender rather than despair: “not to my own sight but to your plan I surrender it, my Lord.” What the listener is left with is a mature and hard-won faith, one that admits the flowers are not blooming and the light seems hidden, yet chooses to trust the unseen God who never stops keeping watch, and to hand him a fruitless season in the confidence that he has a plan for it.