Great Is Thy Faithfulness

            For the past few weeks, a hymn has been running through my head…so much so that when I sat down to write today’s devotional thought, that’s all I could think of.  The words, all by themselves, have been a constant comfort to me, but knowing how powerful thoughts don’t usually come out of nowhere, I decided to find out the story behind the song.  Here’s what I found out:

While many hymns are born out of a particular dramatic experience, this hymn was simply the result of the author’s morning by morning realization of God’s personal faithfulness.  Thomas Obadiah Chisholm was born in a log cabin in Kentucky. Without the benefit of high school or advanced training, he began his career as a school teacher at the age of sixteen, in the same country schoolhouse where he had received his elementary schooling.

       When he was twenty-one, he became the associate editor of his home town weekly newspaper, The Franklin Favorite. Six years later he accepted Christ as his personal Savior during a revival meeting through the ministry of Henry Clay Morrison, the founder of Asbury College and Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.  Morrison persuaded Chisholm to move to Louisville where he became editor of the Pentecostal Herald.

            Later Chisholm was ordained to the Methodist ministry but was forced to resign after a single, brief appointment at Scottsville, Kentucky, because of poor health.   He relocated his family to Winona Lake, Indiana to recover, and then to Vineland, New Jersey in 1916 where he sold insurance.

Chisholm retired in 1953 and spent his remaining years at the Methodist Home for the Aged, in Ocean Grove, New Jersey.  By the time of his retirement, he had written over 1200 poems, 800 of which were published. Many of these were set to music.  One of them was the hymn that I can’t get out of my head: “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”  In 1923, he sent several poems, including this one, to composer William Runyan who later wrote, "This particular poem held such an appeal that I prayed most earnestly that my tune might carry over its message in a worthy way, and the subsequent history of its use indicates that God answered prayer."  Runyan, also a Methodist minister, had grown up in Kansas. After pastoring churches for a dozen years, he was appointed evangelist for the Central Kansas Methodist Conference. A creative musician, he wrote many hymn tunes and was a hymnal compiler and an editor.  He was associated with John Brown University in Arkansas and later Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. For a number of years he was associated with Hope Publishing Company.

The hymn was first introduced in Great Britain in 1954 by the Billy Graham Crusades. A phrase in Lamentations 3:22-23 provides a basis for its refrain: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

In a letter dated 1941, Mr. Chisholm wrote; “My income has not been large at any time due to impaired health in the earlier years which has followed me until now, although I must not fail to record the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God, for which I am filled with astonishing gratefulness.”

Great Is Thy Faithfulness

  (1) Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father!

There is no shadow of turning with Thee;

Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not:

As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

      

(2) Great is Thy faithfulness, great is Thy faithfulness,

Morning by morning new mercies I see;

All I have needed Thy hand hath provided-

Great is Thy faithfulness, lord, unto me!

      

(3) Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,

Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above,

Join with all nature in manifold witness

To Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

      

(4) Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,

Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide,

Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow-

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!

I don’t know about you, but my life is full of examples of God’s faithfulness.  I’ve been reminded of that many times during this month of enormous stress and uncertainty.  Every morning, when I wake up—early, because I can’t sleep any more for the racing of my mind—I pray that the more things change, this one thing will stay the same:  that “He changes not, His compassions, they fail not.  As He has been He forever will be.”  May that be each of our experience in the days and weeks to come.