Ida Denna Epa Vishvasaye Lyrics by Unknown Artist

Do not give room to the lamp of faith
to flicker out and die,
life sinks away into the darkness,
so stay awake and watchful..

How wondrous, my Lord, the way you healed
the unbelief of Thomas
on the day you gave your face, your wounds, to his,
he too received the right understanding…

That disciple, drawing near in fear,
gazing with his eyes upon your wounds,
only touched them, only laid his hand,
and the doubt in his mind was driven away…

“Look, look upon my heart,” you said,
and you showed him the folds of your heart,
and there was mirrored the never-fading love
toward the whole human race…

In the wound the spear had opened wide,
hide us away, at every moment,
Lord, the two-and-thirty sufferings you endured
were what brought us our liberation

This is a hymn built on the story of Doubting Thomas, the disciple who would not believe Jesus had risen until he touched the wounds himself, and it turns that famous scene into both a warning and a comfort. It opens with the warning: “do not give room to the lamp of faith to flicker out and die,” because when faith dies “life sinks away into the darkness.” The remedy is simple and urgent, “stay awake and watchful.”

Then it retells the Gospel scene with tenderness. Thomas’s unbelief was not scolded but “healed”, “on the day you gave your face, your wounds, to his, he too received the right understanding.” Jesus did not turn the doubter away; he offered his own scarred body as the proof. “That disciple, drawing near in fear, gazing upon your wounds, only touched them, only laid his hand, and the doubt in his mind was driven away.” Faith was restored not by argument but by an encounter with the wounded, risen Christ.

The most beautiful turn imagines Jesus saying, “look, look upon my heart,” showing “the folds of your heart,” in which “was mirrored the never-fading love toward the whole human race.” The wounds are windows into the love behind them. And so the song ends by asking to be sheltered in that very love, “in the wound the spear had opened wide, hide us away,” remembering that “the two-and-thirty sufferings you endured”, the traditional count of Christ’s Passion, “were what brought us our liberation.” What the listener is left with is a hymn that meets every doubter with grace, pointing not to condemnation but to the wounded heart of Christ, where doubt is answered by love and faith’s lamp is kept from going out.