Dear Reader:

It never ceases to amaze me that if I put something out there in cyberspace…an idea or story or song on the blog post, someone will pick it up, like the torch in a relay, and run with it. That “Someone” this time, is Jo Dufford.

Her connection bell began to ring when she listened to the “Garden Song” again and its metaphor to life. Suddenly she knew a song from her hymn book that was the perfect analogy to it. The name of the hymn is “Moment by Moment, Oh Lord I am Thine.”

Jo told me to listen to it, read the lyrics and I would see the connection…instead of “steps and rows” the lyrics describe “moments by moments.”

 Moment by moment I’m kept in His love;
Moment by moment I’ve life from above;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine;
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.

Never a trial that He is not there,
Never a burden that He doth not bear,
Never a sorrow that He doth not share,
Moment by moment, I’m under His care

……………………………

As I listened to the tune and lyrics I decided to check on the origin of the song too and it told its own unique story.

One day while at­tend­ing the World’s Fair in Chi­ca­go [Il­li­nois], Hen­ry Var­ley, a lay preac­her from Lon­don, said to Major Whittle: “I do not like the hymn ‘I Need Thee Every Hour‘ ve­ry well, be­cause I need Him ev­ery mo­ment of the day.” The seed was planted. Major Whittle started working on the hymn.

Soon af­ter Ma­jor Whit­tle wrote this sweet hymn…He brought the hymn to a distributor in man­u­script, saying that he would give the co­py­right of both the words and mu­sic to the publisher if he would print (for him) five hund­red co­pies on fine pa­per, to distribute among his friends.

His daugh­ter, May Whittle,, who lat­er be­came the wife of Will R. Moo­dy, com­posed the mu­sic (on this organ.) The music was sent to Eng­land, where it was (ironically)  co­py­right­ed the same day as at Wash­ing­ton. D.C.

In Eng­land the hymn be­came ve­ry pop­u­lar. Fall­ing in­to the hands of the well-known Rev. An­drew Mur­ray, of South Af­ri­ca, then vi­sit­ing Lon­don, he adopt­ed it as his fa­vo­rite hymn. A year lat­er the Reverend Mur­ray vi­sit­ed North­field [Mas­sa­chu­setts], and while hold­ing a meet­ing for men in the church he re­marked, “If someone on­ly knew a hymn which I found in Lon­don, and would sing it, everyone would discover that it em­brac­es my en­tire creed.”

The famous distributor (Sankey) happened to be in the congregation and was  anx­ious to know what hymn it was. After Rev. Murray re­cit­ed it to him, Sankey announced: “Doc­tor, that hymn was writ­ten with­in five hun­dred yards of where we are stand­ing.”

For years Rev. Mur­ray had his wife sing this hymn at near­ly all his church gatherings. It be­came a great fa­vo­rite hymn in South Af­ri­ca dur­ing the war.

…………………………

It doesn’t stop there…it isn’t just the connection between these two ideas…Jo Dufford and the hymn, lyrics, and origin…the connection takes on a more modern twist. “Before telling you this part…I would advise everyone to learn the lyrics and tune so you can sing it in the car…you might be surprised why.”

In an excerpt from an article titled: “It’s a Time of Miracles” a minister (Rich Nath) tells his Christmas Eve congregation the story of something that happened in his family many years before…the family miracle. 

“This event took place late in 1981 before my sister was born when my brother and I were kids. Mom went out Christmas shopping one evening while we stayed home with Dad. I remember Mom coming home shaking and crying. I didn’t know why until the story was related to me years later.

That night, while on the way home, she was driving along River Road. Most of that road is unlit at night, as there are no streetlights. Mom was about three or four miles from home when she got to a dark bend in the road that also has a dip. As she came around the bend and up out of the dip, she saw a pickup truck in her lane coming right toward her! There was no time to swerve out of the way and no time to stop. In that instant she thought her life was over.

She immediately cried out to Jesus and closed her eyes, waiting for the inevitable collision. Only, it never happened. Literally, the next moment she was on the other side of the truck, still moving and still in her lane.

She opened her eyes and looked in her rear view mirror. The truck, behind her now, was still going and still in the wrong lane. Somehow, some way, Jesus saved her life. Whether she was picked up or transported or just allowed to go through the oncoming truck, Jesus saved her. There’s no other explanation.

I’m a scientist by degree, and I’ve taken enough physics classes to know that a car just doesn’t fly, and while teleportation is really neat in sci-fi shows, it doesn’t exist. Yet that night the laws of physics were changed to keep my mother alive.”

*Apparently Nath also shared his story on a blog because another minister responded with this amazing story…this time…connecting the hymn (in discussion) to a similar incident.

(Ken Lombardo)

“I had a similar experience while driving home from an evening church service more than ten years ago. We’d just sung Moment By Moment as our closing hymn, a hymn that’d been on my mind all day. I was singing it in the car.

In the chorus, I sang Moment By Moment I’m kept in His love, Moment By Moment, I’ve life from above… just then a car suddenly tried to make a left turn right in front of me and, in one motion, I swerved my steering wheel to the right and then back to the left to stay on the road and try to avoid the other car.

There certainly was no time or space to allow that… the funny thing is I was still singing as it happened so fast, so during the swerve,… Looking to Jesus His glory doth shine… then back on the road, I, too, looked in my rear view mirror to see the car had made the turn and I marveled thinking the Lord had allowed our cars to pass through each other… I continued singing, Moment By Moment, Oh Lord, I am thine.  (And of course, weeping to consider the depth of meaning now applied to that lyric. I can’t sing that hymn anymore without remembering that miracle. Thanks for sharing your mom’s testimony and reminding me.)

So until tomorrow…Jo, you make one connection that makes another that makes another…”We are all connected under the sun.” It just takes one domino to start the journey.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Moment by Moment – YouTube