precious Lord, take my hand

Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.

Deuteronomy 31:6

Some think this great old gospel song was written by the famous big bandleader Tommy Dorsey. It wasn't; the author was named Thomas Andrew Dorsey, and he was the son of a Black preacher.

Thomas was born in a small town in Georgia in 1899. When he was about eleven, the Dorseys moved to Atlanta where Thomas was quickly enamoured with the blues and began playing the piano as a vaudeville theater. Later the family moved to Chicago where he attended classes at the College of Composition and Arranging. Soon he was on stage under the name "Georgia Tom," playing barrelhouse piano and leading jazz bands.

After being converted in Chicago in 1921, Thomas began writing gospel songs and trying to get them published. It was discouraging at first. He later said, "I borrowed five dollars and sent out 500 copies of my song, 'If You See My Savior,' to churches throughout the country...It was three years before I got a single order. I felt like going back to the blues."

He didn't, and gradually his reputation grew and his work became known.

In August, 1932, while leading music in St. Louis, he was handed a telegram bearing the words, "Your wife just died." He rushed to a phone to call home, but all he could hear over the line was "Nettie is dead! Nettie is dead!" A friend drove him through the night, and he arrived home to learn that his baby boy had also died.

"I began to feel that God had done me an injustice," Thomas later said, "I didn't want to serve Him anymore or write anymore gospel songs." But the next Saturday, while alone in a friend's music room, he had a "strange feeling" inside--a sudden calm and a quiet stillness. "As my fingers began to manipulate over the keys, words began to fall in place on the melody like drops of water falling from the crevice of the rock:

Precious Lord, take my hand

Lead me on, let me stand

I am tired, I am weak, I am worn..."

Today Thomas A. Dorsey is remembered as the "Father of Gospel Music" and the author of hundreds of gospel songs including his equally famous, "Peace in the Valley."

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

little is much when God is in it

 A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation. I the Lord, will hasten it in its time.

Isaiah 60:22

 

 

One snow-blanketed night, Canadian Fred Suffield awoke to an urgent pounding on his door. A half-frozen man reported that a train had stalled in the blizzard, and the passengers were in danger of freezing to death. Lighting a lantern, Fred followed the man to the site and led the travelers back to his house. Later one of the passengers, Kittie, wrote a thank you note. Fred replied, and Kittie wrote back. Their correspondence led to courtship and to marriage.

 

Some time later, Fred and Kittie attended a church in Ottawa. The ministers name was A.J. Shea. While there, they obeyed the gospel. As the couple grew in Christ, they became even more "on fire for God." One summer they invited Shea's teenage son, George Beverly, to spend a month with them in Westport, Ontario, holding gospel meetings.

 

One night, while Kittie was playing the piano, Bev attempted to sing, but his voice cracked on the high notes, and he sat down mortified, vowing never to sing again. Kittie wouldn't hear of it, suggesting he sing in a lower key. He did, and he kept on singing, and singing, and singing.

 

Many years passed, and in June 2000, George Beverly Shea, 92, was asked to sing at a concert. His rich baritone voice broke into a song that had been written 73 years before by Fred and Kittie: "Little Is Much When God Is in It."

 

Bev Shea's song was about the littleness of our efforts. Compared to this great mission to untold multitudes, our own individual ministries seemed small and insignificant. But God uses little things in great ways. A tiny acorn may produce a forest. A spark may ignite a flame. A small church may produce the next far-famed preacher.

 

Don't be discouraged if your place seems small. You're doing more good than you know.

 

 

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

 

 



Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

...let us run with endurance the race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith...

Hebrews 12:1, 2

Helen Howarth Lemmel was born in England in 1863, into the same home of a minister who immigrated to America when Helen was a child. She loved music, and her parents provided the best vocal teachers they could find. Eventually Helen returned to Europe to study vocal music in Germany. In time, she married a wealthy European, but he left her when she became blind, and Helen struggled with multiple heartaches during midlife.

At age 55, Helen heard a statement that deeply impressed her: "So then turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness."

"I stood still," Helen later said, "and singing in my soul and spirit was the chorus, with not one conscious moment of putting word to word to make rhyme, or note to note to make melody. The verses were written the same week, after the usual manner of composition."

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Doug Goins of Palo Alto, California, and his parents, Paul and Kathryn Goins, both 82, of Sun City, Arizona, knew Helen in Seattle. "She was advanced in years and almost destitute, but she was an amazing person," said Doug. "She made a great impression on me as a junior high child because of her joy and enthusiasm. Though she was living on government assistance in a sparse bedroom, whenever we'd ask how she was doing, she would reply, 'I'm doing well in the things that count.'"

One day, the Goins invited her to supper. "We had never entertained a blind person before," recalled Kathryn, "and it was interesting. Despite her infirmities, she was full of life. I remember how amused we were when, following supper, she said, 'Now if you will lead me to the bathroom, I'll sit on the throne and reign.'"

"But she was always composing hymns," said Kathryn. "She had no way of writing them down, so she would call my husband at all hours and he'd rush down and record them before she forgot the words."

Helen had a small plastic keyboard by her bed. There she would play, sing, and cry.

Helen Lemmel, who wrote nearly 500 hymns during her lifetime, died in Seattle in 1961, thirteen days before her 98th birthday.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

The Love of God

Praise the Lord! Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.

Psalm 106:1

This hymn was written in a citrus packing house in Pasadena, California, by a German-born man named Frederick M. Lehman. At age four, Frederick and his family had immigrated to America, settling down in Iowa. Frederick's greatest love was gospel music, and he compiled five songbooks and published hundreds of songs.

In 1917, his finances had gone sour, and he found himself working in a packing factory in Pasadena, moving thirty tons of lemons and oranges a day. One morning as he arrived at work, a song was forming in his mind. He had been thinking about the limitlessness of God's love, and during breaks he sat on an empty lemon crate and jotted down words with a stubby pencil.

Arriving home that evening, he went to the old upright piano and began putting notes to his words. He finally had a melody and two stanzas, but almost all gospel songs of that era had at least three stanzas. At length, he thought of some lines he had recently heard in a sermon:

Could we with ink the ocean fill and were the skies of parchment made,

Were every stalk on earth a quill, and every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above would drain the ocean dry,

Nor could the scroll contain the whole though stretched from sky to sky.

That verse perfectly formed the third stanza, but who had written it? As Frederick heard the story, it was composed on the wall of an insane asylum by an unknown inmate. Perhaps someone did find it there, but we now know the words originally came from the pen of an eleventh-century Jewish poet in Germany named Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai.

Frederick lived the rest of his life in California, writing a number of hymns before his death in 1953. One of his most popular gospel songs, now outdated and forgotten, was based on the wonder of a new-fangled invention that was sweeping over America. It was called "The Royal Telephone."

Central's never "busy," always on the line;

You may hear from heaven almost any time....

Telephone to glory, O what joy divine!

I can feel the current moving on the line....

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

 

Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee

For I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.

Jeremiah 29:11

The author of the hymn, Henry Jackson van Dyke, was born in Pennsylvania in 1852, and became a minister of a church in New York City. Henry later became professor of English literature at Princeton, and the author of a number of books, including the still popular "The Other Wise Man." He went on to occupy a number of eminent positions, including:

-American Ambassador to the Netherlands and Luxenbourg (appointed by his friend, Woodrow Wilson)

-Lieutenant Commander in the United States navy Chaplains Corps during World War I

-President of the National Institute of Arts and Letters

In 1907, Henry van Dyke was invited to preach at Williams College in Massachusetts. At breakfast one morning, he handed the college president a piece of paper, saying, "Here is a  hymn for you. Your mountains (the Berkshires) were my inspiration."

When he was later asked about this hymn, van Dyke replied, "These verses are simple expressions of common Christian feelings and desires in this present time--hymns of today that may be sung together by people who know the thoughts of the age, and are not afraid that any truth of science will destroy religion, or any revolution on earth overthrow the kingdom of heaven. Therefore this is a hymn of trust and joy and hope."

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

This Is My Father's World

...For the world is Mine, and all it's fullness.

Psalm 50:12b

Maltbie Babcock was arguably the most remarkable student Syracuse University had ever seen. Hailing from an aristocratic family, he was a brilliant scholar with a winning personality. Tall and steel-muscled, he was an outstanding athlete, expert swimmer, and captain of the baseball team. he also directed the university's orchestra, played several instruments, and composed original compositions. A proficient vocalist, he directed the university glee club. He entertained other students by drawing and doing impersonations. On the side, he was an avid fisherman.

He would have been successful in any profession, but he decided to be a minister. After going to school, he became the minister at a church in Lockport, New York. It was a beautiful area--midway between  Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, not far from Niagara Falls--and Maltbie enjoyed hiking and running in the hills outside town. Telling his secretary, "I'm going out to see my Father's world," he would run or hike a couple of miles into the countryside where he'd lose himself in nature.

It was while preaching at Lockport that he wrote a sixteen-stanza poem, each verse beginning with the words, "This Is My Father's World."

In 1886, Maltbie became a minister in Baltimore. While there, he traveled widely and was in great demand on college campuses. He was a fresh, engaging speaker who never failed to stimulate students. In 1899, he moved to another church to serve in New York City. Here he found it more difficult to take off on his hikes. The work load was enormous, but Maltbie faced it stoically, writing:

Be strong! We are not here to play, to dream, to drift,

We have hard work to do and loads to lift;

Shun not the struggle. Face it. 'Tis Gods gift. Be strong!

When he was 42, his church presented him with a special gift--a trip to the "Holy Land." With great excitement, Maltbie departed by ship. While en route at Naples, Italy, he was seized with a deadly bacterial fever and died at the International Hospital on May 18, 1901.

After his death, his wife compiled his writings into a book entitled Thoughts for Everyday Living, published in 1901. Included was Maltbie's "This Is My Father's World."

*Don't forget to scroll down to the bottom of the blog and pause the playlist, ok? ;)

When We All Get to Heaven

"And I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.:

Matthew 16:19

Eliza Edmunds Hewitt was one of the premier women hymnwriters of the late 1800s and the early 1900s. She wrote the popular hymn, "Singing I Go Along Life's Road," which was to have such a profound influence of George Beverly Shea. She is also the author of "Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown?" "My Faith Has Found a Resting Place," "Sunshine in My Soul," "More About Jesus," and this hymn, "When We All Get to Heaven."

It came to her as she studied John 14, where Jesus told His disciples, "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."

But this wasn't Eliza's only hymn about heaven. Though now seldom-sung, one of her most unique songs is entitled,"The Everlasting Hymn," in which she imagines the majesty of worshipping the Lord as we gather around Him in the heavenly places, vibrantly echoing the biblical song of the angels:

Holy, Holy, Holy; Angels voices singing;

Holy, Holy, Holy, through high heaven ringing.

From that temple, pure and bright, Bathes in streams of crystal light,

Hear the everlasting hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy.

Holy, Holy, Holy; Grandest music swelling;

Holy, Holy, Holy, All sweet notes excelling,

Those who conquered by His might, Wearing now their crowns of light,

Join the everlasting hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy.

Holy, Holy. Holy; Come let us adore Him;

Holy, Holy, Holy, Humbly bow before Him.

Wisdom, glory, love, and might, With the seraphim unite

In the everlasting hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy.

That's what we'll be singing--when we all get to heaven.

*don't forget to pause the playlist at the bottom of the blog. :)

FYI, this is just a video that I found on YouTube......

Count Your Blessings

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.

James 1:17

It's impossible to be thankful and, at the same time, grumpy, cantankerous, critical, or ill-tempered. That's a lesson Johnson Oatman wanted to teach young people in his song, "Count Your Blessings."

Johnson was born in New Jersey just before the Civil War. His father had a powerful voice which some people claimed was the best singing voice in the East. That's why, as a boy, Johnson Jr., always wanted to stand beside his father in church.

When Johnson was a young man, he stood alongside his father in another way. He became a partner in Johnson Oatman & Son, his dad's mercantile business. At age 19, Johnson was an active part in his church. He often preached, but never was a full-time minister, for he enjoyed the business would and found it paid his bills, giving him freedom to minister without cost.

In 1892, with his father's voice undoubtedly ringing in his memory, Johnson began writing hymns. He averaged 200 hymns and gospel songs a year--5,000 during the course of his lifetime, among them: "Higher Ground," "No Not One," "The Last Mile of the Way," and this one, "Count Your Blessings," which was published in a song book for young people in 1897. It reflected Johnson's optimistic faith, and has been a lesson to many ever since.

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Martin Luther wrote in his book, Table Talk: "The greater God's gifts and works, the less they are regarded." We tend to exhibit a degree of thanksgiving in reverse proportion to the amount of blessings we've received. A hungry man is more thankful for his morsel than a rich man for his heavily-laden table. A lonely woman in a nursing home will appreciate a visit more than a popular woman with a party thrown in her honor.

If the birds only burst into song once a year, we'd all pay close attention. But because they are singing every morning, we scarcely bother to listen.

Now is a good time to lay this book aside and deliberately thank God for something you've never before mentioned in thanksgiving. Count your blessings. Name them one by one.

And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul  



Jesus Loves the Little Children

Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God.

Luke 18:16

Almost everyone knows "Jesus Loves the Little Children," but few of us have sung the three verses that go along with the chorus. Nor do many people realize this was originally a Civil Way ballad.

George Frederick Root was born into a large family in Sheffield, Massachusetts, in 1820, and showed signs of musical genius. By age thirteen, he boasted that he could play thirteen different instruments. As a young adult, he taught music in Boston and New York. He also composed music.

In 1855, he offered a song called "Rosalie, the Prairie Flower" to his publisher for the hefty sum of $100. Root's publisher, not thinking it worth that much, offered Root a royalty plan instead. In time, Root grossed thousands of dollars from "Rosalie," which helped establish him financially.

The outbreak of the Civil War deeply affected George, and he immediately began using his gifts to advance the Union war effort, writing a host of patriotic songs to rally the moral of the North. As a serious, classical composer, he was embarrassed at the simple martial music coming from his pen, so he signed them with the name "Wurzel," the German word for "Root." Among his most popular pieces was a ballad entitled, "Tramp! Tramp! Tramp!"

In the prison cell I sit,

Thinking, mother, dear of you,

And our bright and happy home so far away,

And the tears, they fill my eyes,

'Spite of all that I can do,

Tho' I try to cheer my comrades and be gay.

Chorus:

Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! The boys are marching,

Cheer up, comrades, they will come,

And beneath the starry flag

We shall breathe the air again

Of the free land in our own beloved home.

After the Civil War, the melody remained popular but the words were dated. A minister named Clare Herbert Woolston, a lyricist whom Root occasionally used, wrote new verses and a chorus. And that's how a Civil War ballad about a soldier in prison became one of the most popular children's choruses in history.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

When the Roll is Called Up Yonder

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, shall live.

John 11:25

This old favorite was inspired by disappointment. James Black was calling roll one day for a youth meeting at his church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. One name didn't answer--young, Bessie, the daughter of an alcoholic. Crestfallen at her absence, James commented, "O God, when my own name is called up yonder, may I be there to respond!" Returning home, a thought struck him while opening the gate. Entering the house, he went to the piano and wrote the words and music effortlessly.

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Years later, this song comforted a group of traumatized children in a Japanese concentration camp. In his book, A Boy's War, David Mitchell, tells of being in boarding school in Chefoo, China, during the Japanese invasion. On November 5, 1942, the students and faculty were marched from their campus and eventually ended up in Weihsien Concentration Camp.

Among the students was Brian Thompson, a lanky teenager. One evening about a year before the war ended, Brian was restless, waiting for the evening roll call which was long overdue. A bare wire from the searchlight tower was sagging low, and some of the older boys were jumping up and touching it with their fingers. "Whew, I got a shock off that," said one.

Brian decided to try. Being taller than the others, his hand was drawn into the wire, and it came down with him. When his bare feet hit the damp ground, the electricity shot through him like bolts of lightning. his mother, who had been interred with the students, tried to reach him, but the others held her back or she, too, would have been electrocuted. Finally someone found an old wooden stool and managed to detach the electrical wire, but it was too late.

At roll call that night, when the name "Brian Thompson" was called, there was no answer. David Mitchell later wrote: "Our principal and Mr. Houghton led a very solemn yet triumphant funeral service the next day. The shortness of life and the reality of eternity were brought home to us with force as Paul Bruce related that Brian had missed roll call in camp but had answered one in Heaven. How important it was for us to sing and know, 'When the Roll is called up yonder, I'll be there.'"

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

(Don't forget to pause the blog background music.)


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A giveaway with Linz......

America the Beautiful

The heavens are Yours, the earth also is Yours; The world and all its fullness, You have founded them.

Psalm 89:11

In 1892, the United States observed the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.

As part of the celebration, the city of Chicago sponsored a World's Fair, which carried over to the next year. It was in the early summer of 1893, that a group of professors from Wellesley College visited the Exposition on their way to teach summer school in Colorado. The women later compared the wonders of the man-made Fair with the glory of God's handiwork in the Rockies.

At the close of school, the teachers decided to visit Pike's Peak, elevation 14,000 feet. One of them, Katherine Lee Bates, later wrote, "We hired a prairie wagon. Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there. with the sea-like expanse...

It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind. When we left Colorado Springs the four stanzas were penciled in my notebook....The Wellesley work soon absorbed time and attention again, the notebook was laid aside, and I do not remember paying heed to these verses until the second summer following, when I copied them out and sent them to The Congregationalist, where they first appeared in print July 4, 1895. The hymn attracted an unexpected amount of attention...In 1904, I rewrote it, trying to make the phraseology more simple and direct.

The new version first appeared in the Boston Evening Transcript, November 19, 1904.

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There are two stories about the melody, Materna, which was written by Samuel A. Ward, originally for a hymn entitled, "O Mother Dear, Jerusalem." Ward's son-in-law said that the tune was composed in memory of Ward's oldest daughter. One of the employees at Ward's music store in Newark insisted that he composed the tune in 1882 while crossing New York harbor after spending the day at Coney Island. The notes came to him so quickly he jotted them on the cuff of his shirt. Perhaps both stories are true.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul 

Note: Scroll down to the bottom of the blog and pause the music. ;)

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Standing on the Promises

For all the promises of God in Him are Yes, and in Him Amen, to the glory of God through us.

2 Corinthians 1:20

Russell Kelso Carter, author of this hymn, was an athlete, educator, rancher, preacher, and physician. Here is his condensed story:

From my birth in 1849, I was surrounded by Christian influences. My father stood for nearly half a century in the rank of Christian workers in Baltimore; by his side I had the example of a patient, loving mother. I cannot remember when I was not subject to deep convictions of sin; yet as a school boy, I wandered from the truth until age fifteen, when, under the influence of the cadet prayer-meeting in the Pennsylvania Military Academy, I repented and dedicated my life to Jesus.

But I made a common mistake; I didn't forsake my old companions and habits, and for fourteen years I lived the up-and-down experience so familiar to the average church member. I never enjoyed myself so much as when working in Mr. Moody's meetings in Baltimore; yet even up to that time I was continually slipping and falling. My soul cried for deliverance, and God's unlimited promises stood out like stars above me. But I wasn't willing to pay the price.

In the summer of 1879, my heart, which had been chronically diseased for seven years, resisting the remedies of physicians, and, refusing to grow better even after three years of sheep-ranching in California, suddenly broke down so seriously as to bring me to the verge of the grave. I had heard of the "power of faith" for healing, but I felt persuaded it would border on blasphemy to ask God for a strength which I didn't propose to use wholly for Him.

Kneeling in my mother's room, I prayed. All doubtful things were swept aside. I meant every word, and I have never had any doubts about it since. A quietness came over me and I found the Bible wonderfully open and marvelously satisfying, as it had never been before.

Feeling all the more impressed with God's healing promises, I concluded to go to Boston and ask for prayer and anointing. I was terribly weak, but I went. I will only add that I returned in three days, walking by faith, and not by feeling, resumed my college work in September, and at once engaged in all kinds of religious work. I was healed by the power of God alone. Praise the Lord!

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

How Great Thou Art

For thus says the Lord, Who created the heavens, Who is God, Who formed the earth and made it, Who has established it, Who did not create it in vain, Who formed it to be inhabited: "I am the Lord, and there is no other."

Isaiah 45:18

Carl Boberg, a 26-year-old Swedish minister, wrote a poem in 1885 which he called "O Store Gud"--"O Mighty God." The words, literally translated to English, said:

When I the world consider/ Which Thou hast made by Thine almighty Word

And how the webb of life Thou wisdom guideth/ And all creation feedeth at Thy board.

Then doth my soul burst forth in song of praise/ Oh, great God, Oh, great God!

His poem was published and "forgotten"--or so he thought. Several years later, Carl was surprised to hear it being sung to the tune of an old Swedish melody; but the poem and hymn did not achieve widespread fame.

Hearing this hymn in Russia, English missionary, Stuart Hine, was so moved he modified and expanded the words and made his own arrangement of the Swedish melody. He later said his first three verses were inspired, line upon line, by Russia's rugged Carpathian Mountains. The first verse was composed when he was caught in a thunderstorm in a Carpathian village, the second as he heard the birds sing near the Romanian border, and the third as he witnessed many of the Carpathian mountain-dwellers coming to Christ. The final verse was written after Dr. Hine returned to Great Britain.

Some time later, Dr. J. Edwin Orr heard "How Great Thou Art" being sung by Naga Tribespeople in Assam, in India, and decided to bring it back to America for use in his own meetings. When he introduced it at a conference in California, it came to the attention of music publisher, Tim Spencer, who contracted Mr. Hine and had the song copyrighted. It was published and recorded.

During the 1954 Billy Graham Crusade in Harringay Arena, George Beverly Shea was given a leaflet containing this hymn. He sand it to himself and shared it with other members of the Graham team. Though not used in London, it was introduced the following year to audiences in Toronto.

In the New York Crusade of 1957, it was sung by Bev Shea ninety-nine times, with the chorus joining with majestic refrain:

Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee.

How great Thou art! How great Thou art!

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

P.S. You might want to scroll down and pause the background music to the blog before starting the clip. :)

'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus

In God I have put my trust; I will not be afraid.

Psalm 56:11

How fitting that a missionary should write this hymn about faith and trust. Louisa M. R. Stead was born about 1850 in Dover, England. She felt a burden to become a missionary in her teenage years. When she was 21 or so, she immigrated to the United States and attended a gospel meeting in Urbana, Ohio. There, she decided that she would become a missionary.

She made plans to go to China, but her hopes were dashed when her health proved too frail for the climate there. Shortly afterward, she married a man named Stead. But sometime around 1879 or 1880, Mr. Stead drowned off the coast of Long Island. Some accounts say that he saved a boy who was drowning, and other accounts say both Mr. Stead and the boy perished. Other records suggest it was his own four-year-old daughter, Lily, that he saved. In any event, the family's beach-side picnic ended in tragedy for Louisa.

Shortly afterward, taking little Lily, Louisa went to South Africa as a missionary, and it was there during those days she wrote, "Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus."

Louisa served in South Africa for fifteen years, and while there she married Robert Wodehouse. When her health forced a return to America, Robert preached at a local church. In 1900, her health restored, Robert and Louisa attended a large missionary conference in New York, and were so enthused by the experience they again offered themselves as missionary candidates.

They arrived as missionaries in Rhodesia on April 4, 1901, "In connection with this whole mission there are glorious possibilities," she wrote, "One cannot in the face of the peculiar difficulties help saying, 'Who is sufficient for these things?' but with simple confidence and trust we may and do say, 'Our sufficiency is of God.'"

Louisa retired in 1911, and passed away in 1917; but her daughter Lily, married missionary D. A. Carson and continued the work for many years at the church's mission station in southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

Note: You need to scroll to the bottom of the blog and pause the playlist before beginning the clip. :)

God Be with You

Grace. mercy, and peace will be with you from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.

2 John 3

On September 19, 1945, missionary Darlene Deibler was liberated from the Japanese Prison Camp at Kampili, seventeen days after Japan had signed the Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri. She was in bad shape; having been subjected to years of physical suffering and mental torture.

Eight years before, Darlene and her husband, Russell, had landed as missionaries in New Guinea. Plunging into the work, they were making solid progress in building a growing church, aided by Darlene's dear friend and mentor, Dr. Robert Jaffray. Now both Russell and Dr. Jaffray were dead, and Darlene was leaving behind two lonely white crosses on the hillside. As a 28-year-old widow, she was returning home without a single possession. All her mementos and private keepsakes were gone, her loved ones were dead, and her body was debilitated by exhaustion, starvation, malaria, beriberi, and dysentery.

For over four years, she had witnessed atrocities that can scarcely be described. Prisoners all around her had suffered horrible deaths, and she herself had seen the inside of death cells. During that time, not one letter or package had reached her.

As the boat carried her from her island prison, she prayed a bitter prayer: "Lord, I'll never come to these islands again. They've robbed me of everything that was most dear to me."

Suddenly she heard voices, Indonesian voices ringing from the distance. There on the shore were those who had come to know the Lord through her mission, raising their voices, singing: "God be with you till we meet again./ By His counsels guide, uphold you,/ With His sheep securely fold you;/ God be with you till we meet again."

Darlene later wrote in her autobiography, Evidence Not Seen; "This song released the waters of bitterness that had flooded my soul, and the hurt began to drain from me as my tears flowed in a steady stream. The healing had begun. I knew then that someday, God only knew when, I would come back to these my people and my island home."

"God Be With You Till We Meet Again," was written by Jeremiah Rankin, president of Howard University, the great African-American college in the nation's capital. He wrote it, he said, after discovering that the term "good-bye" meant "God be with you."

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

Note:You might want to scroll to the bottom and pause my playlist before beginning the clip. =)



All the Way My Savior Leads Me

...that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.

Colossians 1:9

When Fanny Crosby wrote, "All the way my Savior leads me, What have I to ask betide?" she was expressing her own testimony of God's guidance. Even her blindness, she realized, was part of His plan.

When Fanny was about six weeks old, her parents had realized with alarm that something was wrong with her eyes. The local doctor was away, but the Crosbys found a man--no one afterward recalled his name--who claimed to be a physician. He put hot poultice on the baby's inflamed eyes, insisting it would draw out the infection. The infection did clear up, but white scars appeared, and in the months that followed the baby registered no response to objects held before her. As it turned out, Fanny was not totally blind. Even in old age she could discern day from night. But her vision was gone.

Yet this stimulated other gifts, such as her phenomenal memory. As a child, Fanny memorized whole sections of the Bible, including most of the Pentateuch, the four Gospels, all of Proverbs, and vast portions of other books. Whenever she wanted to "read" a passage, she just turned there in her mental "Bible" and read it verbatim. "This Holy Book," she said when eighty-five, "has nurtured my entire life."

Years later, Fanny viewed her blindness as a special gift from God, believing He had given her a particular "soul-vision" which equipped her for special work. "It was the best thing that could have happened to me," she declared. "How in the world could I have lived such a helpful life had I not been blind?"

"Don't blame the doctor," Fanny said on another occasion. "He is probably dead by this time. But if I could meet him, I would tell him that he unwittingly did me the greatest favor in the world."

Though this hymn expressed Fanny Crosby's lifelong testimony, it was prompted by a specific incident in 1874. One day she didn't have enough money to pay her rent. Just as she committed the matter to God in prayer, a stranger appeared at her door and pressed a ten-dollar bill in her hand before disappearing. It was the very amount needed. That night, she wrote the words to "All the Way My Savior Leads Me."

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

what about our faith?

What do you imagine when you hear the word faith?  Repelling off a cliff?  White-water rafting?  Snow skiing in Colorado?  Or does faith bring you to your knees in prayer?

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells a parable about a persistent widow. He proposes a just God does not become weary of our cries.  Jesus asked this question at the parable’s conclusion, “When the Son of Man comes will He really find faith on earth?”

           “My Faith Looks Up to Thee” is a song written by Ray Palmer.   Palmer was busy working as a store clerk, attending classes at Yale, teaching in New York, with future expectations of becoming a minister. He was disheartened with his unattained pursuits.

          In 1830, at the age of 24, Palmer was approached by Lowell Mason, who was focusing on pursuing musical interests.  Mason directed chorus's, published hymnals, and was compiling a songbook. He asked Palmer to help him compose hymns for his projected hymnbook.

          Palmer pulled a little book from his pocket and showed Mason a poem that he had written two years before in his one-room apartment.  It was a prayerful plea to give him renewed courage and faith when he was feeling discouraged.  He later said that he “had not the slightest intention of writing for others, least of all a hymn for Christian worship.”

          Does our faith look up, when we are feeling dejected?  God can turn our tearful prayers into a song.  Allow God to find faith on earth…look up!

I Will Sing of My Redeemer

For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

1 Corinthians 6:20

As a ten-year-old boy, when Philip Paul Bliss heard the sounds of a piano for the first time, his imagination was deeply stirred. Later, riding his horse, Old Fanny, he had become a traveling musician. In 1870, he joined the staff of a Chicago church. In March, 1874, he became the song leader for the evangelistic campaigns of Major Daniel W. Whittle. All the while, Philip was penning some of America's favorite gospel songs.

By the end of 1876, Philip needed a break. He had just written the music to "It is Well With My Soul," and finished a whirlwind tour of meetings with Major Whittle. While he and his wife Lucy were spending the Christmas holidays with his family in Pennsylvania, a telegram arrived requesting they come to Chicago to sing.

On December 29, 1876, leaving their two small children with Philip's mother, they boarded the Pacific Express. The snow was blinding, and the eleven-coach train was running about three hours late. About eight o'clock that night as the train creaked over a chasm near Ashtabula, Ohio, the trestle bridge collapsed. The engine reached solid ground on the other side of the bridge, but the other cars plunged 75 feet into the ravine.

Philip survived the crash and crawled out through a window. But within moments, fire broke out, and Lucy was still inside, pinned under the twisted metal of the iron seats. The other survivors urged Philip not to crawl back into the flaming wreckage. "If I cannot save her, I will perish with her," he shouted, plunging into the fiery car. Both Philip and Lucy died. He was thirty-eight.

Philip's trunk finally arrived in Chicago safely. In it were found the words to the last hymns he had written, one of which was:

I will sing of my Redeemer;

And His wondrous love for me;

On the cruel cross He suffered,

From the curse to set me free.

Sing, oh sing, of my Redeemer,

With His blood, He purchased me.

On the cross, He sealed my pardon,

Paid a debt, and made me free.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

It Is Well with My Soul

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

Psalm 34:19

When the great Chicago fire consumed the Windy City in 1871, Horatio G. Spafford, an attorney heavily invested in real estate, lost a fortune. About that time, his only son, age 4, succumbed to scarlet fever. Horatio drowned his grief in work, pouring himself into rebuilding the city and assisting the 100,000 who had been left homeless.

In November of 1873, he decided to take his wife and daughters to Europe. Horatio was close to D. L. Moody and Ira Sankey, and he wanted to visit their evangelistic meetings in England. then enjoy a vacation.

When an urgent matter detained Horatio in New York, he decided to send his wife, Anna, and their four daughters, Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie, on ahead. As he saw then settled into a cabin aboard the luxurious French liner Ville du Havre, an unease filled his mind, and he moved them to a room closer to the bow of the ship. Then he said good-bye, promising to join them soon.

During the small hours of November 22, 1873, as the Ville du Havre glided over smooth seas, the passengers were jolted from their bunks. The ship had collided with an iron sailing vessel, and water poured in like Niagara. The Ville du Havre tilted dangerously. Screams, prayers, and oaths merged into a nightmare of unmeasured terror. Passengers clung to posts, tumbled through darkness, and were swept away by powerful currents of icy ocean. Loved one's fell from each other's grasp and disappeared into foaming blackness. Within two hours, the mighty ship vanished beneath the waters. The 226 fatalities included Maggie, Tanetta, Annie, and Bessie. Mrs. Spafford was found nearly unconscious, clinging to a piece of the wreckage. When the 47 survivors landed in Cardiff, Wales, she cabled her husband: "Saved Alone."

Horatio immediately booked passage to join his wife. En route, on a cold December night, the captain called him aside and said, "I believe we are now passing over the place where the Ville du Havre went down." Spafford went to his cabin but found it hard to sleep. He said to himself, "It is well; the will of God be done."

He later wrote his famous hymn based on those words.

The melody for "It Is Well," titled Ville du Havre, was written by Philip Bliss who was himself soon to perish, along with his wife, in a terrible train wreck in Ohio.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul

Blessed Assurance

...nevertheless I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day.

2 Timothy 1:12

Frances Ridley Havergal and Frances (Fanny) Crosby never met, but they became dear pen pals--the two most famous women hymnists of their age, the former in England and the latter in America. Havergal once wrote a poem about her American counterpart:

Sweet, blind singer over the sea, Tuneful and jubilant! How can it be,

That the songs of gladness, which float so far, As if they fell from the evening star

Are the notes of one who may never see

'Visible music' of the flower and tree...

Oh, her heart can see, her heart can see!

And its sight is strong and swift and free....

Another of Fanny's dearest friends was Phoebe Knapp. While Fanny lived in the Manhattan slums and worked in rescue missions, Phoebe lived in the Knapp Mansion, a palatial residence in Brooklyn, where she entertained lavishly. She was an extravagant dresser with a wardrobe full of elaborate gowns and diamond tiaras. Her music room contained one of the finest collections of instruments in the country, and Fanny was a frequent houseguest.

One day, in 1873, while Fanny was staying at the Knapp Mansion, Phoebe said she had a tune she wanted to play. Going to the music room, she sat at the piano and played a new composition of her own while the blind hymnist listened. Fanny immediately clapped her hands and exclaimed, "Why, that says, 'Blessed Assurance!'" She quickly composed the words, and a great hymn was born.

Taken from the book: Then Sings My Soul