Dear Trekker,
I believe I have mentioned I sing to my wife Barbara each night when we turn in! It started about three years ago when she was diagnosed with CML, chronic myeloid leukemia, and was fighting a venous ulcer on her left calf. While waiting for the lidocaine to “kick in” and kill the pain before I would re-dress the wound, she would say tenderly, “Sing to me!” Little did I know that “sing to me” would become a nightly hymn sing that would continue after the ulcer healed and the leukemia would be kept at bay by modern medicine. It continues today on a daily basis. I sing a hymn she usually selects, we pray together side-by-side to the One who never sleeps, expressing love to and for each other and then sleep the wondrous sleep of the redeemed.
We use two hymn books. One is Robert J. Morgan’s, Then Sings My Soul, 150 of the greatest hymn stories, Thomas Nelson, 2003 and Love Reaching: Hymns for the Family of God, Paragon Associates, 1976. Barbara usually picks the hymn, lays it by my pillow and I find out what I am singing for the night when I pick up the hymn book.
A few nights ago Morgan’s book was by my pillow, and we were in for a wonderful few moments of worship and blessing. The song Barbara had selected (one of her favorites, she said) was “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.” It’s a favorite of mine too. I sang this as a solo in worship services starting about 70 years ago. But I didn’t know the story behind the hymn until this night.
Here are the lyrics:
Verse 1: O soul are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior
And life more abundant and free
Chorus: Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
Verse 2: Through death into life everlasting
He passed, and we follow Him there
Over us sin no more hath dominion
For more than conquerors we are.
(Repeat Chorus after each verse)
Verse 3: His word shall not fail you, He promised
Believe Him and all will be well
Then go to a world that is dying,
His perfect salvation to tell!
Well, the words I knew all these years, but the author of the lyrics and song melody, I did not… Helen H. Lemmel. In all these years, I had not bothered to find out. My… both of us were in for a treat and blessing. I changed my writing topic this month because I felt the Spirit encouraging me to share the blessing!
Morgan writes: “Helen H. Lemmel was born in England in 1863, into the home of a Wesleyan minister (that caught my eye given my own Wesleyan heritage) who migrated 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 when she became blind (italics mine) and Helen struggled with multiple heartaches during midlife.
At age 55, Helen heard a statement that highly impressed her, “So then, turn your eyes (her blind eyes) upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth, will acquire a strange new dimness.”
Barbara and I were moved as I read and sang those words. We had no idea she was blind. “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, but nonetheless, dictated by the Holy Spirit.
As it turned out, she spent the last portion of her life in Seattle, Barbara’s hometown. She died and was whisked into glory in 1961, thirteen days before her 98th birthday, and seven years after Barbara left Seattle to go on Young Life staff in Wheaton, IL where we met in 1954. (In slightly over 15 days, we will celebrate 63 years of marriage. How blessed we are!)
Helen Lemmel wrote nearly 500 hymns during her lifetime, virtually all after she became blind. Despite her infirmities, she was full of life. She had quite a sense of humor. One couple who knew her in Seattle, remarked, “We had never entertained a blind person before. One night, following supper, she said, ‘Now, if you will lead me to the bathroom, I’ll sit on the throne and reign.’” Then she added, “She was always composing hymns. 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.” Caused me to wonder how beloved and blind Amy Carmichael, too, wrote so many lyrics for hymns. Helen Lemmel said: “One day God is going to bless me with a great heavenly keyboard. I can hardly wait.”
About ten years ago, my niece Paulette Kjeldsen, gave me Morgan’s book. Her inscription (in part) is as follows: “I am so blessed to have been brought up within an extended family that worshipped together and learned to love the old hymns. The Lord has used it (Morgan’s book) to speak to me, as so many of the songs we love were written in times of pain or human suffering, but the Holy Spirit anointed each writer and transformed each situation into a beautiful anthem of faith and victory.” My niece spoke deep truth. It was so for Barbara and me, afresh and anew, a few nights ago.
God bless you Trekker.
Your friend,
Jim Meredith
