Thel Mal Suwanda Sandun

Bringing oil, and flowers, fragrance and sandalwood,
cupped and heaped in our hands,
placing them in devotion upon the altar,
we offer them to you as our gifts

The sorrows and the tears we have borne
all through our whole life,
to offer them to you in this chalice,
we bring them to you as our gifts

The worldly fame and wealth we have won,
the comforts, the joys, the laughter we have known,
to hand them back into your hands once more,
we bring them to you as our gifts

Ourselves, and all that is ours,
O God, is offered up to you
that we may be made complete within your divinity,
grant to us your blessing

This is an offering hymn, a song for laying gifts before God, and it deepens beautifully as it goes, moving from ordinary offerings to the offering of one’s whole self. It begins with the traditional gifts brought to worship, “oil, and flowers, fragrance and sandalwood, cupped and heaped in our hands,” placed “in devotion upon the altar.” These are the visible tokens of a heart wanting to give.

But the hymn quickly reaches past the physical to something far more costly. In the second verse it offers not just flowers but pain: “the sorrows and the tears we have borne all through our whole life, to offer them to you in this chalice.” The chalice carries a Eucharistic echo, the cup lifted at the altar, and here it holds a lifetime of grief handed over to God. Then, in the third verse, it offers the good things too, “the worldly fame and wealth we have won, the comforts, the joys,” giving even success and happiness back “into your hands.”

The final verse names what has really been happening all along: “ourselves, and all that is ours, O God, is offered up to you.” The gifts of oil and flowers were only the beginning; the true offering is the whole self, sorrows and joys and possessions alike. And the reason is the loveliest part, “that we may be made complete within your divinity.” What the listener is left with is the full meaning of worship as self-gift, a heart that brings its flowers, its tears and its triumphs to the altar and finally lays down itself, asking only to be completed in God.