Today I want to tell you about three hymns you’ll like. I’ve selected these three because they have a common theme, and because I lean on them so often. I wish I could sing them for you. The Lord didn’t give me a musical voice, at least not for performance purposes, but you can find each of these hymns and learn them yourself on any music streaming service or video platform. They will encourage you every day, every hour, and every moment.
Day by Day
First, there’s the hymn “Day by Day”. Now, there are several songs by that title. The Broadway musical Godspell has a song which says, “Day by day, day by day, oh dear Lord, three things I pray: to see Thee more clearly, to love Thee more dearly, to follow Thee more nearly day by day.” That is not the song I’m talking about here, but it is a wonderful set of lyrics that are attributed to Richard of Chichester who lived in the 1200s. He was an English Bishop and he wrote a Latin prayer that someone translated into English with these words:
Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ,
For all the benefits Thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, Friend and Brother,
May I know Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly,
Day by Day.
We’re told that Richard offered that prayer on his deathbed, and he probably did offer a prayer something like that. But as I said, the words were transcribed in Latin. Whoever translated them into English came up with the rhyming triplet: clearly, dearly, and nearly. As far as we know, the first time this prayer became a song was in the 1920s.
The blind hymnist, Fanny Crosby, also wrote a hymn entitled “Day by Day,” although I’ve never heard it sung. Josiah Conder wrote a hymn with the same title that I sometimes quote. But the hymn I have in mind today is a Swedish hymn by Karolina Wilhelmina Sandell-Berg. Translated into English her hymn says:
Day by day, and with each passing moment,
Strength I find, to meet my trials here;
Trusting in the Father’s wise bestowment,
I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.
He whose heart is kind beyond all measure
Give unto each day what He deems best—
Lovingly, its part of pain and pleasure,
Mingling toil with peace and rest.
The second verse is the one I’ve copied into my Quiet Time notebook and I’m working on memorizing it, which one can do easily by singing it every day. Listen to these encouraging words:
Every day, the Lord Himself is near me
With a special mercy for each hour;
All my cares He fain would bear, and cheer me,
He whose name is Counselor and Power;
The protection of His child and treasure
Is a charge that on Himself He laid;
“As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure,”
This the pledge to me He made.
Karolina Wilhelmina Sandel-Berg, who went by the name Lina, was born in 1832 and into the family of a Lutheran minister and pastor in southern Sweden. She adored her father, Jonas, and as a child often played in his office while he studied and prepared his sermons. When she was twelve, Lina was stricken with a strange paralysis that kept her confined to bed much of the time and which puzzled the doctors. They didn’t expect her to recover. But one Sunday morning while her parents were at church, Lina began reading the Bible and praying. She read the story of Jesus raising to life the daughter of Jairus. She had an experience with God, and when her parents returned home they were amazed to find her up and dressed and walking freely.
Lina began writing poems and hymns, and her first book of verses was published when she was sixteen. Ten years later, tragedy struck her life. She accompanied her father on a preaching trip, which involved crossing Lake Vattern. On the evening of July 27, 1858, Lina and her father boarded the ship, and before going to bed Lina read Psalm 77 for her devotions. The next moment she met her father on the deck and just as he reached out to take her hand, a large wave swept him into the lake. All she saw was his white hair bobbing in the water and then he was gone. She became “catatonic with horror” according to one biographer. But she found comfort in the Scripture she had read the night before—Psalm 77.
It was after this that she wrote her two best known hymns, “Children of the Heavenly Father” and “Day by Day.” Her hymns were sung in churches all across Scandinavia. In 1867 she married a businessman named Oscar Berg, and they settled down in Stockholm. In 1892, Lina contracted typhoid fever, and she passed away in 1903 at the age of seventy.
The last verse of Lina Sandell-Berg’s hymn, Day by Day, says:
Help me then, in every tribulation
So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,
That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation
Offered me within Thy holy Word.
Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,
E’er to take, as from a father’s hand,
One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,
Till I reach the promised land.
I Need Thee Every Hour
Well, the days are divided into hours. And that brings me to the next classic hymn I’d like to share with you: “I Need Thee Every Hour.” This Gospel song was also written by a woman.
Her name was Annie Hawks, and she was a housewife and mother of three in Brooklyn, New York.
As a child, Annie Sherwood had dabbled in poetry, her first verse being published when she was fourteen. In 1857, she married a banker named Charles Hawks and they established their home in Brooklyn, where they joined Hanson Place Baptist Church. The pastor there was Dr. Robert Lowry, who was himself a hymnist. Dr. Lowry wrote: “Shall We Gather at the River?” And “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus.”
With Dr. Lowry’s encouragement, Annie began writing Sunday School songs for children, and he set many of them to music.
“I Need Thee Every Hour” was written on a bright June morning in 1872. Annie later wrote, “One day as a young wife and mother of 37 years of age, I was busy with my regular household tasks. Suddenly, I became so filled with the sense of nearness to the Master that, wondering how one could live without Him, either in joy or pain, these words, ‘I Need Thee Every Hour,’ were ushered into my mind, the thought at once taking full possession of me.”
The next Sunday, Annie handed these words to Dr. Lowry, who wrote the tune and chorus while seated at the little organ in the living room of his Brooklyn parsonage. Later that year, it was sung for the first time at the National Baptist Sunday School Association meeting in Cincinnati, Ohio, and published in a hymnbook the following year.
It is said that “I Need Thee Every Hour” was translated into more languages than any other modern hymn of its time.
When Annie’s husband died sixteen years later, she found that her own hymn was among her greatest comforts. “I did not understand at first why this hymn had touched the great throbbing heart of humanity,” Annie wrote. “It was not until long after, when the shadow fell over my way, the shadow of a great loss, that I understood something of the comforting power in the words which I had been permitted to give out to others in my hour of sweet serenity and peace.”
Sometime after Charles’ death, Annie moved to Bennington, Vermont, to live with her daughter and son-in-law. All in all, she wrote over four hundred hymns during her eighty-three years, though only this one is still widely sung. The simple words say:
I need Thee ev’ry hour,
Most gracious Lord;
No tender voice like Thine
Can peace afford.
I need Thee ev’ry hour,
Stay Thou nearby;
Temptations lose their pow’r
When Thou art nigh.
I need Thee ev’ry hour,
In joy or pain;
Come quickly and abide,
Or life is vain.
I need Thee, oh, I need Thee;
Ev’ry hour I need Thee;
Oh, bless me now, my Savior,
I come to Thee.
Moment By Moment
Now, let me ask you. What could be better than having the Lord with you day by day and hour by hour? It’s knowing His presence moment by moment. And that’s the last of the three hymns I want to share with you. It’s called “Moment by Moment,” and ironically it was inspired by someone who didn’t like the hymn, “I Need Thee Every Hour.”
Daniel Whittle was born in New England in 1840, which meant he became a young adult just as the Civil War was breaking over America. At that time he was working in a bank in Chicago, and he gave his life to Christ in the bank vault while working as the night watchman. He said, “I went into the vault and in the dead silence of the quietest of places I gave my life to my Heavenly Father to use as He would.”
He enlisted in the 72rd Illinois Infantry and the night before he was deployed he married his girlfriend, Abbie Hanson. He would not see her for a full year. He was wounded in Vicksburg and promoted to the rank of Major. And from that point, he was also called Major Daniel Whittle. He was shot through the arm.
After the Civil War, Whittle and his wife settled in Chicago where he worked at the Elgin Watch Company until, under the influence of Dwight L. Moody, he gave himself to full time work as a traveling evangelist. But he is best known today as a hymnwriter. He once said, “I hope that I will never write a hymn that does not contain a message — there are too many hymns that are just a meaningless jingle of words; to do good a hymn must be founded on God’s word and carry the message of God’s love.”
In 1893, Major Whittle visited the Chicago World Fair with another. I wish I could go back in time and visit this World’s Fair. It’s where the Ferris Wheel was first introduced, and the zipper, and Cracker Jacks, and the first voice recording.
Major Whittle later wrote, “While I was attending the World’s Fair, in Chicago, 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.’ Soon after Major Whittle wrote this sweet hymn, having the chorus:
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.
Ira Sankey wrote, “Mr. Whittle brought the hymn to me in manuscript a little later, saying that he would give me the copyright of both the words and music if I would print for him five hundred copies on fine paper, for distribution among his friends. His daughter, May Whittle, who later became the wife of Will R. Moody, composed the music. I did as Mr. Whittle wished; and I sent the hymn to England, where it was copyrighted on the same day as in Washington.”
This became the favorite hymn of the great devotional writer Andrew Murray, and it’s one of mine too.
Dying with Jesus, by death reckoned mine;
Living with Jesus, a new life divine;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine,
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.
Refrain
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.
Never a heartache, and never a groan,
Never a teardrop and never a moan;
Never a danger but there on the throne,
Moment by moment He thinks of His own.
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.
So there are three great hymns to take you through the course of life, day by day, hour by hour, and moment by moment. You’ll find the stories of these hymns and many others and my three-volume set of books Then Sings My Soul, designed to help you know, treasure, and sing the classic hymns of our Christian heritage.