Mage Hadawathe Lyrics by Nimesh Fernando

Filling a feeling in my heart,
what is written there is your name
filling every breath that I draw,
what I grasp is your love

Filling every teardrop that fell from my eyes,
it was you who comforted me, Jesus
until my whole life is spent, close beside me,
the one who stays is you, my God

Carry me in your hands
until the journey of life is done
comfort me in your embrace
until my tears are dried

You wrote my name upon your hand,
and looking at it, you call me your son
you gave your life and loved me
wondrous is your love, forever
carry me in your hands

Drawing near me all through life,
offering affection, you loved me
one day, having become wholly yours,
I will dwell in heaven with you, my God, forever
filling a feeling in my heart…
carry me in your hands…

This is a warm, intimate hymn about a God who is woven into the smallest details of a life. The opening images are quietly beautiful: “filling a feeling in my heart, what is written there is your name,” and “filling every breath that I draw, what I grasp is your love.” God is not distant here; he is in the heartbeat and the breath, so present that every teardrop the singer has shed was one where “it was you who comforted me, Jesus.”

The prayer at the centre is tender and childlike. “Carry me in your hands until the journey of life is done; comfort me in your embrace until my tears are dried.” The believer asks not for power or success but simply to be held all the way to the end. Then comes one of the loveliest images in the song, taken from the prophet Isaiah, where God says he has engraved his people on the palms of his hands: “you wrote my name upon your hand, and looking at it, you call me your son.” To be named on God’s own hand, and claimed as a child, is the heart of the comfort here.

The final verse lifts its eyes to the future. God has been “drawing near me all through life, offering affection,” and the singer looks ahead to the day when, “having become wholly yours, I will dwell in heaven with you forever.” What the listener is left with is the deep security of being loved in the ordinary present and kept for an eternal future, a heart that carries God’s name and trusts to be carried, all the way home.