October 12, 2018 (Friday)
Many years ago a storm caught a sailing vessel off a rocky coast. The wind and waves threatened to drive the boat to its destruction.
In the midst of the terror, one daring passenger, contrary to orders, made his way across the ship. Groping along a passageway, he found the pilot house. There he beheld an intriguing sight; the ship’s pilot was lashed to his post. Secure against the raging elements, he held the wheel fast, turning the ship, inch by inch, once more out to sea. The pilot saw the watcher and smiled.
The daring passenger found his way below deck where other passengers huddled. Encouragingly, he said, “I have seen the face of the pilot, and he smiled. All is well.”
Many people are able to share a testimony that when life grew dark and dangerous, and they felt threatened, they turned to Jesus in prayer and their fears vanished. They turned their eyes away from the danger and focused on Jesus, and all was well.
a.k.a. The Heavenly Vision
From Hymnary.org
The writer of this song was Helen H. Lemmel
Full Name: Lemmel, Helen Howarth, 1864-1961
Birth Year: 1864
Death Year: 1961
Born: November 14, 1863, Wardle, England.
Died: November 1, 1961, at her home in Seattle, Washington.
Buried: Lemmel was cremated, but her final resting place is unknown to us.
Daughter of a Methodist minister, Helen emigrated from England with her family to America when she was 12 years old. They first settled in Mississippi, then relocated to Wisconsin. She moved to Seattle in 1904, and for three years was music critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. While interviewing German singer Ernestine Schumann-Hein, Helen was persuaded to go to Europe. A gifted singer, she studied music in Germany for four years. Upon her return to America, she began giving concerts and traveling on the Chautauqua circuit. Eventually, she became a vocal music teacher at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. After retirement, she moved to Seattle, Washington, where she was a member of the Ballard Baptist Church. Among her works are a hymnal used by evangelist Billy Sunday for over a decade. Lemmel and a women’s choral group she directed were part of Sunday’s group at the peak of his career.
From Richard Niell Donovan (www.sermonwriter.com/hymn-stories/)
The song was inspired by a tract written by Lilias Trotter, a missionary to Algeria. Trotter was writing about the difficulty of maintaining focus while living in a world that provides us with so many choices. She gave this prescription for keeping one’s life moving in the right direction:
Turn your soul’s vision to Jesus, and look and look at Him,
and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him.
Lemmel wrote more than 500 hymns, but “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus” is the one that has continued to find its way into modern hymnals–and into human hearts. As is true of so many popular hymns, it holds out a promise of Jesus’ help for troubled souls.
O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the savior
And life more abundant and free.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace.
• After retiring, Lemmel moved back to Seattle, where she lived until her death at age 97 in 1961.
While researching this article, I came across a couple of web sites that said that Lemmel had married a European man, but that he abandoned her when she lost her sight. I have been unable to verify her marriage or that she was blind–or to determine exactly when and where she lost her sight. However, there is a good deal of irony in the possibility that a blind woman wrote “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus.”
While this song was inspired most directly by Lilias Trotter’s tract, it also brings to mind several scriptures:
• “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2).
• “Seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1).
• “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
• “Therefore don’t be anxious, saying, ‘What will we eat?’, ‘What will we drink?’ or, ‘With what will we be clothed?’ … But seek first God’s Kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:31, 33).