Hymn – “Sweet Hour of Prayer” – William Walford (1772-1850)From an earlier era, many of us recall the radio/television commercial break “How do you spell relief?” The answer, of course, was not “R-E-L-I-E-F”; it was rather “Rolaids.”
This hymnline is not about gastrological distress and grief necessarily; it points more toward that kind of commonly-held malady which confronts most of us at varying degrees. Some are greatly distressed while others are simply stressed out. Some are truly dealing with deep-seated grief while the rest of us may with Charlie Brown be uttering “Good grief” in exasperation for one more seemingly unnecessary distraction.
Nonetheless, we believers all have found in prayer a certain relief from our distress and grief. You may have considered it more “release” in that you finally felt freed from the fettering – pardon my alliteration! As the next hymnline continues, our prayer life has often allowed us to escape the traps set by the Tempter along our pathway through uncharted territory.
These ‘old gospel songs’ often get us back to the basics of our faith experience; in this case, the hymn-writer is reminding us that the sweet time spent at the throne in prayer provides us with much more than merely the answers to our made-known wants and wishes.
How do I spell relief? Sometimes I spell it P-R-A-Y-E-R.
Vance Perry Multi-track
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