"Stamp thine own image deep on my heart."

Hymn: "O to Be Like Thee"
Words: Thomas O. Chisolm (1866-1960)
Tune: RONDINELLA (also called CHRISTLIKE in some hymnals)

From the writer who gave us "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" comes this wonderful meditative prayer-hymn. It may not be terribly familiar to you, but it should become so. [I'm attaching a copy.] It is one of the most Christ-centered texts in all of hymnody and could be prayed morning by morning when the new mercies of Christ become evident.

The line I have chosen from this hymn is the last phrase of the refrain. What a tremendous request made of Christ: "Stamp thine own image deep on my heart." This follows the request for personal

purity.

Chisholm's descriptors for Jesus are simply profound as they are listed throughout the hymn:

• Full of compassion
• Loving
• Forgiving
• Tender 
• Kind
• Helper of helpless
• Cheerer of fainting ones
• Seeker of wanderers
• Lowly in spirit
• Holy 
• Harmless (never heard THAT one before)
• Patient
• Brave
• Meek
• Endurer of cruelty
• Wiling sufferer.

You can print that list out and put it in your Bible. Like I said, this is a Christ-centered text!

One other line I will highlight is this: "Gladly I'd forfeit all of earth's treasures, Jesus, thy perfect likeness to wear." This is another, maybe more poetic way to say, "I'd rather have Jesus than silver and gold."

Learn this hymn... at least the refrain... so you can sing it to yourself often. The prayer to be like Christ could be the turnaround point for us who might voice this kind of desperate cry to the Perfect One.

"O to be like thee, Blessed Redeemer, pure as thou art!
Come in thy sweetness. Come in thy fullness.
Stamp thine own image deep on my heart."


Listen to This Hymn

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=jnazafzv&p=O+to+be+like+thee#id=27&vid=fae91b39f37dfacd5029aca857875081&action=view