Rebel to Redeemed…Sharing HIS Kind of Love
Precious Memories is one of the songs that when I began to play or sing it many others seem to naturally join in. Memories of days gone by seem to roll through our minds and hearts with the melody. Precious Memories is credited as having been written by J.B.F. {John Braselton Fillmore} Wright in 1925. J.B.F. Wright was born February […]
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This is a very special song to me. With the anniversary of the passing of my Dad, my mind is turning to this song more and more these days. You see, My Faith Still Holds is the last song my Dad sang as he finished preaching his last sermon. At that time we had no way of knowing that it […]
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Until Then is one of the songs that can climb into my head and remain for days. I can’t help but sing the lyrics on my heart. Until Then, also sometimes referred to as My Heart Can Sing When I Pause to Remember, was written by Carl Stuart Hamblen. Stuart Hamblen was born on October 20th, 1908 in Kellyville, Texas. He […]
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Little seems to be known about the author of the hymn Be Still My Soul. Katharina Amalia Dorothea von Schlegel, the author, who was born in 1697. She is believed to have come from an aristocratic family in Germany. Jane L. Borthwick, a member of the Scottish Church, translated the hymn. The tune is called Finlandia and was written by […]
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All Creatures of Our God and King was written by Francis of Assisi shortly before his death in 1225. The song was published 400 years after Francis of Assisi died. He wrote the words for a poem, Canticle of the Sun. The poem was based on Psalms 148. William H. Draper translated the lyrics for a children’s festival in Leeds, […]
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Matthew Bridges was in the middle of the 19th Century battle between the Catholic and Anglican Church. He wrote scathing articles condemning the Catholic church, before later converting to Catholicism in 1848. He based the hymn Crown Him with Many Crowns on Revelations 19:12 “…and on His head were many crowns.” Bridges was born on July 14, 1800 in Essex, […]
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Saint Dallan Forgaill, wrote the text “Rop tú mo Baile”, in the 6th Century. Mary Elizabeth Byrne, founder of the Irish Text Society, translated the Old Irish Text into English in 1905. Seven years later, in 1912, Eleanor Hull changed the text into verse. She published it in her Poem Book of the Gael that year as Be […]
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John H. Sammis was born in 1846 in Brooklyn, New York. He was a successful businessman, Presbyterian minister, taught at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and wrote more than 100 hymns. He died in 1919 in Los Angeles, California. Daniel Brink Towner composed the tune for Trust and Obey. He explains the origins of the song: “Mr. Moody [Dwight […]
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Henry Jeffreys Zelley, a Methodist minister, wrote the song in 1899. Born in 1859, Rev. Zelley served in ministry for over 50 years. He was considered a Bible scholar and also known to write poetry in his spare time. He is believed to have written more than 1,500 songs and poems in his lifetime. He died in Trenton, New Jersey […]
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Francis Scott Key We all know our National Anthem, but do you know how it originated? The author, Francis Scott Key, was at Fort McHenry when the British Royal Navy bombed the fort in 1814. Francis Scott Key, a lawyer and amateur poet, and John Stuart Skinner were on a mission for President James Madison on September 3, 1814. The […]
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Strife hung in the air throughout the American Civil War. Wife and mother, Julia Ward Howe, heard the troops singing a song, John Brown’s Body. She was impressed with the catchy tune, but not the words. One day in November 1861, she and her husband traveled visiting the troops in Washington, DC. Her minister, Rev. James Freeman Clarke, was part […]
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Irving Berlin’s patriotic love song to his adopted homeland was hidden away for over twenty years before being publicly made known. Irving Berlin was a Russian immigrant living in New York City. Growing up, Berlin often heard his mother say “God Bless America.” Berlin later said about his mother, “without America, her family would have had no place to go. […]
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The hymn was written in 1864, by Robert Lowry, a poet and composer. Lowry was born in Philadelphia on March 12, 1826. From an early age he showed a great love for music. He served as minister at Hanson Place Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York. He described the inspiration of the song by saying “One hot afternoon in July […]
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Elvina Mable Hall was born in 1818 in Alexandria, Virginia. She was twice married, to Richard Hall and later to Rev. Thomas Myers. She died in 1899. She said the hymn was “written on the fly-leaf of the New Lute of Zion, in the choir of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Baltimore, in the spring of 1865.” She shared her lyrics to […]
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This popular hymn was written by Isaac Watts. Watts was born in 1674 and died in 1748. He would become a pastor and wrote poems and hymns to go with his sermons. He wrote over 600 hymns during his lifetime. Today we still know some of his songs such as At the Cross and Joy to the World. We don’t […]
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This beautiful song was written by Rev. Thomas A. Dorsey in 1937. Dorsey was born on July 1, 1899 in Villa Rica, Georgia. The 1930s were a difficult time for him. In 1930, his wife and newborn son died. He later said, “I was doing all right by myself, but the voice of God whispered, ‘You need to change a […]
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Have you ever felt unfulfilled in your life? That was the struggle with Charles Davis Tillman. Born shortly after the end of the Civil War, to a Methodist Minister and his wife, he struggled to make his way in the world as a young adult. After committing his life to Christ, he spent his life working for the Savior. One […]
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This popular hymn was written without the intention of ever being published. Written for the English holiday, Whitmonday in 1865. Whitmonday is a day for festivals in Yorkshire. Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould recalled, “one Whitmonday it was arranged that our school should join its forces with that of a neighboring village. I wanted the children to sing when marching from one […]
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Corrie Ten Boom had an amazing testimony for Christ. However, her faith and story came from the horrors of life that took place in Nazi Germany during World War II. Ten Boom was the only one of her family to survive the concentration camps. She later recalled a conversation she had with her father in which she could not imagine […]
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This is a new hymn to me, but I discovered it working on another project and was intrigued. Sadly, I’ve not been able to discover much about the origin of the hymn. The hymn, Sweet and Clear the Birds are Singing, first appeared in print in 1919, in the Hymnal for American Youth. The lyricist is unknown for his beautifully […]
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