Gathered up, focused lives, intent on one aim – Christ – these are the lives on which God can concentrate blessedness.Īre we ready for a cleavage to be wrought through the whole range of our lives.? All aims, all ambitions, all desires, all pursuits – shall we dare to drop them if they cannot be gathered sharply and clearly into the focus of "this one thing I do"? How do we bring things to a focus in the world of optics? Not by looking at the things to be dropped, but by looking at the one point that is to be brought out.
TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS FULL
For if the Sun of Righteousness has risen upon our hearts, there is an ocean of grace and love and power lying all around us, an ocean to which all earthly light is but a drop, and it is ready to transfigure us, as the sunshine transfigured the dandelion, and on the same condition – that we stand full face to God. And it seemed to talk, standing there – to talk about the possibility of making the very best of these lives of ours. “It was just a dandelion, and half withered – but it was full face to the sun, and had caught into its heart all the glory it could hold, and was shining so radiantly that the dew that lay on it still made a perfect aureole round its head. Here is some of what she wrote in that leaflet: These writings from her journals along with other correspondence have been turned into several published books, including a leaflet called Focused upon which this particular hymn was based. Even when bedridden later in life, she continued to devote herself to prayer, writing, and sketching. She kept a journal every day for forty years as a missionary along with sketches and watercolors of the world she knew.
TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS SERIES
Lilias Trotter was a brilliant artist and was told by a one of England’s most famous art critics that if she devoted herself, “she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be immortal.” Although she was very drawn to art, she ultimately felt that she could not give herself to her art completely and still “seek first the Kingdom of God.” Thus, through a series of events in her life and despite a chronic and debilitating illness, she used all of her own inheritance to serve overseas in North Africa as a missionary. I am not a songwriter, but I am a writer in the world of missions, and the idea that any of the words I’ve penned might become a song sung for almost a century in the Body of Christ around the world is beyond one’s imagination. They never met or knew one another, but they were both born in England about a decade apart and both were uniquely gifted in the arts, and from their two hearts came this song of the saints that might even be sung unto His Return. Each of them is remarkable and worth reading about more.
These two women are Lilias Trotter and Helen Lemmel. The story behind this beautiful hymn is a personal favorite of mine, probably because it is a collaborative story about two women, one a songwriter and the other a missionary who was also a writer.
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