Thursday, May 16, 2024  

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Today's Hymn
“Take My Life”

Take my life; my Lord, I pour
at thy feet its treasure store;
take myself and I will be
ever, only, all for thee,
ever, only, all for thee.

by Frances Ridley Havergal
Hymn 697, Glory to God
verse 6

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Reflection

At age fourteen or fifteen, this English hymn writer (1836–1879) “committed [her] ... soul to the Savior, and earth and heaven seemed brighter from that moment.” During Britain’s golden “mid-Victorian era (1850 to 1870),” “national income per person increas[ed] ... by half.” Yet during that period and following, there were “wars and rumors of wars,” democratic principles had only begun to take hold, and women wouldn’t vote on par with men until 1928. Perhaps societal forces influenced Havergal’s clarion call for recommitment to Christian life.

My dad described my parents’ resolve to live for Christ in a 1969 letter to my uncle. That year culminated a tumultuous decade marked by geopolitical crises, domestic upheaval including tragic assassinations, violent opposition to the Civil Rights Movement, civil unrest, and the 1968/1969 flu pandemic.

Against that backdrop, my parents lost two babies (one was stillborn; the other died soon after birth), and my maternal grandmother died. Full school desegregation came to Pasco, Washington, our hometown, in 1965, eleven years after Brown vs. Board I, when the lone school in our mostly Black neighborhood closed, and the kids were bused across town. Finally both parents were treated for the flu that winter!

My dad wrote, “We are still on the Lord’s side. ... [W]e who stand for what is right will win in the end. So I say still hold on to what you have in Christ and everything will be all right in the end.”

My parents “held on” by studying their Bibles daily, praying “unceasingly,” serving in almost every lay capacity serially, and pledging faithfully. The congregation replaced their one-room church with a new building specced to house a Head Start program that provided preschool education and employment.

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Prayer
Lord, “take my life and let it be consecrated to thee.” Amen.

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Written by Jeanne Griffin, Member of Fourth Presbyterian Church

Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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