Saturday, October 14, 2006 -
The new news

... Posted in This, that and something else

Well, as you can see by the ticker, we're expecting again!!! This will be our 6th baby (and it's my 8th pregnancy). Last April I miscarried, and as hard as that was, we simply trusted God to carry us. We also trusted in Him to give us another baby if it was His will. It's been strange, actually, taking this long to get pregnant... seriously... all my other pregnancies we fairly unexpected and pretty much instant. None of this "trying" business. So, taking since April to conceive was a new experience. Only 4 months, but a big difference from 2 weeks!!! And completely different from the perspective of just trusting the Lord.

This hymn by Joseph H. Gilmore (music by William B. Bradbury) has been going through my head all day. You can find it here.

He Leadeth Me

He leadeth me, O blessèd thought!
O words with heav’nly comfort fraught!
Whate’er I do, where’er I be
Still ’tis God’s hand that leadeth me.

Refrain

He leadeth me, He leadeth me,
By His own hand He leadeth me;
His faithful follower I would be,
For by His hand He leadeth me.

Sometimes mid scenes of deepest gloom,
Sometimes where Eden’s bowers bloom,
By waters still, over troubled sea,
Still ’tis His hand that leadeth me.

Refrain

Lord, I would place my hand in Thine,
Nor ever murmur nor repine;
Content, whatever lot I see,
Since ’tis my God that leadeth me.

Refrain

And when my task on earth is done,
When by Thy grace the vict’ry’s won,
E’en death’s cold wave I will not flee,
Since God through Jordan leadeth me.

Refrain

 

The story behind it:

As a young man who re­cent­ly had been grad­u­at­ed from Brown Un­i­ver­si­ty and New­ton The­o­lo­gic­al In­sti­tu­tion, I was sup­ply­ing for a cou­ple of Sun­days the pul­pit of the First Bap­tist Church in Phil­a­del­phia [Penn­syl­van­ia]. At the mid-week ser­vice, on the 26th of March, 1862, I set out to give the peo­ple an ex­po­si­tion of the Twen­ty-third Psalm, which I had giv­en be­fore on three or four oc­ca­sions, but this time I did not get fur­ther than the words “He Lead­eth Me.” Those words took hold of me as they had ne­ver done be­fore, and I saw them in a sig­ni­fi­cance and won­drous beau­ty of which I had ne­ver dreamed.

It was the dark­est hour of the Ci­vil War. I did not re­fer to that fact—that is, I don’t think I did—but it may sub­con­sciou­sly have led me to real­ize that God’s lead­er­ship is the one sig­nif­i­cant fact in hu­man ex­per­i­ence, that it makes no dif­fer­ence how we are led, or whi­ther we are led, so long as we are sure God is lead­ing us.

At the close of the meet­ing a few of us in the par­lor of my host, good Dea­con Watt­son, kept on talk­ing about the thought which I had em­pha­sized; and then and there, on a blank page of the brief from which I had in­tend­ed to speak, I pen­ciled the hymn, talk­ing and writ­ing at the same time, then hand­ed it to my wife and thought no more about it. She sent it to The Watch­man and Re­flect­or, a pa­per pub­lished in Bos­ton, where it was first print­ed. I did not know un­til 1865 that my hymn had been set to mu­sic by Will­iam B. Brad­bu­ry. I went to Ro­ches­ter [New York] to preach as a can­di­date be­fore the Se­cond Bap­tist Church. Go­ing in­to their cha­pel on ar­riv­al in the ci­ty, I picked up a hymn­al to see what they were sing­ing, and opened it at my own hymn, “He Lead­eth Me.”

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Comments

Saturday, October 14, 2006 - Untitled Comment

Posted by KarenW

Congratulations!! Another baby is so exciting.

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Monday, October 30, 2006 - Scrapbooked Hymn

Posted by

I love this hymn. I scrapbooked it today see
http://www.scrapbookingtolearn.com/photos/showphoto.php?photo=237&nocache=1

I'm going into surgery soon and this hymn is giving me peace. Thanks for telling the story.

Edited by heartofwisdom on Monday, October 30, 2006 at 4:21 PM

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