Hymn: "He Keeps Me Singing" or "There's within My Heart a Melody" -
Words & Music by Luther B. Bridgers (1884-1948)
Tune: SWEETEST NAME
This is blog post number 50... in case you're counting!
Most of my hymn-lines are not the first six words of the song at hand, but today's gonna be different. As a life-long church musician, it just seems like the thing to do - the place to start - and ultimately the place to end up!
You know the old song "With a Song in My Heart"? It's a 1929 song from the Rogers and Hart musical SPRING IS HERE. You don't know that Broadway show? Me either, but I do know this love song that has lived in spite of the musical's demise. Here are the lyrics to the refrain - the part you might vaguely recall:
With a song in my heart I behold your adorable face.
Just a song at the start, but it soon is a hymn to your grace.
When the music swells, I'm touching your hand.
It tells that you're standing near, and
At the sound of your voice heaven opens its portals to me.
Can I help but rejoice that a song such as ours came to be?
But I always knew I would live life through
With a song in my heart for you.
You should be saying "Ahhh" about now. "Isn't that a sweet little love song?" I am, however, struck by the use of some very church-y allusions... especially coming from a pretty rough-living Jewish text-writer. It IS interesting that later in today's hymn, Bridgers used the line "always looking on his smiling face," which sure hints at the first line from the above show tune! "He Keeps Me Singing" was first published in 1910, so I guess we know which came first!
A year after he wrote this hymn, the Methodist evangelist from North Carolina was away doing a revival when his wife and three sons were killed in a house fire. Unlike Horatio Spafford who penned "It Is Well with My Soul" in response to the decimation of his family, these words came before tragedy. Like most of us, Bridges was thrown by his losses and spent some time out of the pulpit - spiritually regrouping. He later remarried and continued his passion for evangelism as a local-church pastor.
I don't usually revert to hymn stories, because that's not my purpose here. However, the man with a song in his heart for Christ who whispered Fear not, I am with thee... in all of life's ebb and flow, meant what he said; he was able to re-hear that song in his heart, even through and beyond tragic loss.
To quote another old gospel song: Singing I go along life's road for Jesus has lifted my load.
So many times in the midst of our great losses, a melody comes along to sustain us... and with the melody comes a set of words. We are revitalized not only by turning to the Word of God in scripture, but also by the word from God we find in great hymn texts. And the name of Jesus is sweet enough to pleasantly flavor our lives once again... filling our every longing, keeping us singing as we go!
May you have a song in your heart today... and all the rest of your days! I'm gonna try. Wanna join me?
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