For Thou Art with Me

Hilma Untinen was born October 8, 1910, in a log cabin in Northern Minnesota—the ninth of eleven children born to poor Finnish immigrants. When she was 13 years old, her mother died. Hilma’s father wanted her to work the meager homestead, but she left home for Minneapolis, where she finished high school and took a job.

Later Hilma moved to North Dakota, far from family and friends. She met and married a young Irishman and had four children. When her husband died, she worked full-time and reared her children as a single mother. She became a secretary for the federal government and worked every day for 33 years until she retired in 1972. Few people would know that Hilma was one of thousands of nameless faces who helped build the Alaskan Highway.

I met Hilma when she was 92, confined to a nursing home and with Parkinson’s disease. Even at that age, she was clearly a survivor—an exceptional woman. The Finns have a word that captures Hilma’s life – sisu: “strength, determination, fortitude, the ability to do what needs to be done.”

It is easy to assume that Hilma’s strength came from within—that it was human spirit. But the other reality is that Hilma was a woman of deep faith in God. People of genuine faith never live by personal strength alone. The perseverance in Hilma was powered by her trust in God.

The New Testament speaks often of this “endurance” that comes from faith:

“Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ . . . We also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s ever-present love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (Rom. 5:1, 3-5).

The word “endurance” here means to “be patient, persevere, be steadfast”—literally “to bear up under.” Paul says that for people of faith, adversity and suffering produce endurance; endurance produces character—shapes us as people of faith; and character produces hope. This hope does not disappoint us, but gives us further confidence to carry on, because of God’s ever-present love, given to us in the Holy Spirit, is at work in our lives.

The New Testament speaks frequently of the relationship between suffering and endurance because it is the mark of the Crucified One—Jesus—whose life, death, and resurrection are the good news of the Christian gospel. Life in Christ means discipleship under the Crucified One—who endured the cross, and by God’s power, was later raised to new life. Christian life is shaped by faith. God is powerfully at work, moving us from adversity to endurance to character to hope.

A week before she died, I visited Hilma Untinen for the last time. As I read Psalm 23 to her, she began to speak along—word for word—from memory. I remember her soft voice saying, “For thou art with me . . .” (Psalm 23:4).


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These New Testament passages speak of the patience and endurance that come from faith:

Romans 12:9-13
Colossians 1:11-14
Hebrews 10:32-36, 12:1-2
James 5:7-11
2 Thessalonians 3:5
2 Timothy 2:10-12