The last line of stanza one was on repeat in my mind the last few hours, so I looked it up to enjoy the full lyric and learned some fascinating things about the personal pain the hymn writer navigated whilst writing these enduring words that I will paste below.
It was an encouragement to me that pain, misunderstanding, rejection, yuck stuff will pass and pass away, but the faithfulness, prayers and offerings we bring during painful seasons miraculously shall last. Though most will not be penned and passed down through generations, all that is aimed at heaven will surely last there.
“Horatius Bonar (1808–1889), began writing hymns as a missioner at Leith, north of Edinburgh. After the devastating Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 he became a Free Church of Scotland minister. Bonar was an avid writer of evangelical tracts, and had a great ministry among children. He was known for being intensely pastoral in his outlook, and in 1862 published God’s Way of Peace: a Book for the Anxious which was translated into three languages and sold over a quarter of a million copies in his lifetime. Ironically, he never heard his own hymns sung in his own church in Edinburgh, as his was one of the Free Church congregations to oppose the introduction of hymns! I heard the voice of Jesus say (based on Matthew 11: 28) was written in 1846, during what must have been an intensely stressful and painful time for Bonar himself in the immediate years after the 1843 schism."
Brooke Ligertwood
The last line of stanza one was on repeat in my mind the last few hours, so I looked it up to enjoy the full lyric and learned some fascinating things about the personal pain the hymn writer navigated whilst writing these enduring words that I will paste below.
It was an encouragement to me that pain, misunderstanding, rejection, yuck stuff will pass and pass away, but the faithfulness, prayers and offerings we bring during painful seasons miraculously shall last. Though most will not be penned and passed down through generations, all that is aimed at heaven will surely last there.
“Horatius Bonar (1808–1889), began writing hymns as a missioner at Leith, north of Edinburgh. After the devastating Disruption of the Church of Scotland in 1843 he became a Free Church of Scotland minister. Bonar was an avid writer of evangelical tracts, and had a great ministry among children. He was known for being intensely pastoral in his outlook, and in 1862 published God’s Way of Peace: a Book for the Anxious which was translated into three languages and sold over a quarter of a million copies in his lifetime. Ironically, he never heard his own hymns sung in his own church in Edinburgh, as his was one of the Free Church congregations to oppose the introduction of hymns! I heard the voice of Jesus say (based on Matthew 11: 28) was written in 1846, during what must have been an intensely stressful and painful time for Bonar himself in the immediate years after the 1843 schism."
3 months ago | [YT] | 1,126