Be Thou My Vision (1912)
Mary Bryne initial made an interpretation of an Irish sonnet into English in Dublin, Ireland, in 1905. Eleanor Structure, an English creator of writing and history, composed the text as a sonnet in 1912.
The tune of this song is taken from a famous Irish number.
Thy steadfastness is perfect (1923)
While many songs are the consequence of a solitary fantastic episode, the essayist of this tune just started to perceive God’s day to day dedication.
Thomas Obadiah Chisholm was raised without admittance to a secondary school training or expert preparation It was made in a Kentucky log lodge.
He started his vocation as an instructor at sixteen years old at a similar minimal rustic school where he had completed his major training.
He went to a restoration meeting when he was 27 and chosen to follow Christ as his own Friend in need.
After five years, he was elevated to relate manager of the week by week paper in his old neighborhood.
Chisholm had recently a concise pastorate subsequent to being appointed into the Methodist service prior to being compelled to leave because of chronic weakness.
Chisholm resigned in 1953 and spent the remainder of his life in the Methodist Home for the Matured in Sea Woods, New Jersey.
Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing (1757)
Additional lyrics (2nd verse) by Thomas Miller (2005)
Robert Robinson penned this at age twenty-two. Though a Methodist minister at the time, he left the Methodist church when he moved to Cambridge and became a Baptist pastor.
The Baptists invited him to document the history of their branch of the church, and after nine years of labor, he published History of Baptism and Baptists in 1790.
Robinson was “prone to wander” as he had written, facing doubts and struggles on a regular basis. He was accused of converting to Unitarianism later in life and some say he abandoned his faith altogether.
A story is widely told of Robinson, that while riding in a stagecoach one day, a lady asked him if he’d heard of the hymn she was humming.
He responded, “Madam, I am the poor, unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago. I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to feel what I did back then.”
It is unknown whether Robinson ever regained the beliefs he once had, but another version suggests that the lady in the stagecoach gently replied,
“Sir, the ‘streams of mercy’ are still flowing.”—and that he was deeply touched by her words: eventually restored through the ministry of his own hymn.
How Deep the Father’s Love For Us (1995)
Stuart Townend is an English Christian love pioneer and huge essayist of current psalms and contemporary love music.
Stuart’s melodies include: “In Christ Alone” (2002, co-composed with Keith Getty), “Delightful Deliverer” and “The Lord Of Affection.” Townend, child of a Congregation of Britain vicar in Halifax, West Yorkshire, was the most youthful of four youngsters.
He concentrated on writing at the College of Sussex. Townend began figuring out how to play the piano at age seven.
At thirteen years old, he sincerely committed to a Christian responsibility and started songwriting at age 22.
Fairest Lord Jesus (1677)
There is little data on the beginning of this Christian song. There are a few records that say it was designated “Crusader’s Psalm;” that it was sung by German Crusaders as they advanced toward the Sacred Land. The verses to this cherished psalm among English speaking Christians previously showed up in 1677, where it was distributed as “first of three chose songs.”
In the Garden (1912)
According to C. Austin Miles’ great-granddaughter, Miles wrote this song “in a cold, dreary and leaky basement in New Jersey that didn’t even have a window, let alone a view of a garden.”
In March, 1912, while reading the twentieth chapter of John, Miles had a vision of being part of the scene when Mary knelt before her Lord and cried, “Rabboni!” He writes:
My hands were resting on the Bible while I stared at the light blue wall. As the light faded, I seemed to be standing at the entrance of a garden, looking down a gently winding path, shaded by olive branches.
A woman in white, with head bowed—hand clasping her throat as if to choke back her sobs—walked slowly into the shadows.
As she came to the tomb, she bent over to look in and hurried away. John, in flowing robe, appeared; then came Peter, who entered the tomb, followed slowly by John.
As they departed, Mary reappeared, and as she leaned her head upon her arm at the tomb, she wept.
Turning herself, she saw Jesus standing; so did I. I knew it was He. She knelt before Him, and with arms outstretched and looking into His face, she cried ‘Rabboni!’ I awakened in full light, gripping the Bible with muscles tense and nerves vibrating.
Under the inspiration of this vision, I wrote—as quickly as the words could be formed—the poem exactly as it has since appeared; that same evening, I wrote the music.
The Love of God (1917)
In Pasadena, California, Frederick M. Lehman penciled the first two stanzas and chorus of The Love of God.
The lyrics are based on the Jewish poem Haddamut, written in Aramaic in 1050 by Meir Ben Isaac Nehorai, a cantor in Germany.
The third (and breathtakingly beautiful) stanza from the Jewish poem had been found penciled on the wall of a patient’s room in an insane asylum after he had been carried to his grave.
It is said that he had written the epic during a brief moment of sanity.
Pass Me Not O Gentle Savior (1868)
Fanny Crosby, blind since infancy, wrote over 8,000 hymns.
One evening in 1868, Crosby was visiting a prison, walking down a long aisle between cells, reciting the Bible verses she knew by heart, when she heard a man call out, “Remember me! O Lord, please don’t pass me by.”
I Need Thee Every Hour (1872) / I’d Rather Have Jesus (1922)
Before Annie Sherwood Hawks’ death in 1918, she gave the full background story to “I Need Thee Every Hour (inspired by the Bible passage John 15: 4-5):
Seating myself by the open windows, I caught up my pencil and committed the words to paper almost as they are today. A few months later Dr. Robert Lowry composed the tune and also added the refrain.
For myself, the hymn, at its writing, was prophetic rather than expressive of my own experiences, for it was wafted out to the world on the wings of love and joy, instead of under the stress of great personal sorrow, with which it has often been associated.
At first I did not understand why the hymn so greatly touched the throbbing heart of humanity.
Years later, however; under the shadow of a great loss, I came to understand something of the comforting power of the words I had been permitted to give out to others in my hours of sweet serenity and peace.
“I’d Rather Have Jesus” was written in 1922 by Rhea F. Millerthe tune written by George Beverly Shea. This poem was left on a piano in the Shea home by Bev Shea, who wanted her son to find it and change the course of his life.
After he read it, the words spoke profoundly to him about his own aims and ambitions in life. He sat down at the piano and began singing them with a tune that seemed to fit the words. Shea’s mom heard him singing it and asked him to sing it at church the next day.
George’s life direction did change. He was offered a popular music career with NBC but declined later became a partner in the Billy Graham ministry for over fifty years, singing this hymn around the world.
Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus (1882)
Louisa Stead had consistently felt a calling to be a teacher and go to China however because of delicate wellbeing, she was kept home in the US.
She wedded and began a family, and when her little girl was four years of age, the family traveled to a close by ocean side.
While there, they saw a little fellow suffocating in the sea. Louisa’s better half swam out and attempted to safeguard him, however he was pulled under by the kid, and both he and the kid suffocated as Louisa and her little girl watched from shore.
Louisa was left with next to no method for monetary help, and she and her girl were in desperate neediness.
One day when there was no food in the house and no cash, Louisa opened the front way to find that somebody had left food and cash staying there for her. That very day, she plunked down and expressed:
“Tis so Sweet to Confide in Jesus.” She and her little girl later became preachers to Africa, and she remarried.
O The Deep Deep Love of Jesus (1875)
Trevor Samuel After going through his darkest night ever, Francis penned this. Francis found himself crossing London’s Hungerford Bridge at a time when his faith was questioning.
He was thinking about how lonely and depressed he was when he heard a whisper urging him to leap into the turbulent waters below.
The voice was not heard by Francis. On that bridge, he reiterated his confidence and trust in Jesus Christ after experiencing a deep experience in which he felt God’s consoling words come to him in the night.