Turn Your Eyes On Jesus

Scripture

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

~Hebrews 12:1-2, ESV

Quote

“Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.”

~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

It is time for a good story and this one comes from THEN SINGS MY SOUL, by Robert J. Morgan. Helen Howarth Lemmel was born in the mother land in 1863, into the home of a Wesleyan Minister who immigrated to America when Helen was a child. Helen loved music and her parents provided her with the best teachers they could find. Eventually, Helen went to Germany to study vocal music and there she met and married a wealthy European, but some years later Helen went blind and he divorced her and left her with nothing. She was homeless, penniless, and blind. She did not know brail and could not write down her thoughts. She came back to America with nothing and settled in a flat in Seattle, Washington. This was before welfare but someone got her some kind of monthly income from the government and so she lived on that fixed income the rest of her life which was long. She departed this world in 1961 at the age of 98 if my math is correct.

After settling in Seattle at age 55, Helen heard someone say, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full into His face and you will find the things of this world acquire a strange new dimness.” Helen stood still as the Holy Spirit began to move within her; He put the words and the melody in her mind. She never learned to write so she would recite the words to a friend who would write them down. She had a little plastic key board in her one room apartment that she used to compose the tunes to her songs. She would speak the words and play the tunes to others and they would write the music on paper. She did 500 hymns by this same method.

It is ironic to me that a blind person wrote the beautiful and beloved hymn TURN YOUR EYES UPON JESUS. He makes the song more powerful to know it origin. I am upset with the rich man who dumped her and left her without anything. May God have mercy on his wretched soul but I laud Helen for hanging there and giving us such beautiful and uplifting music. Note this: her friends said she was a barrel of enthusiasm. Always happy, always upbeat and funny. She vowed not to live one day without laughter. When folks asks her how she was doing, she would say, “I am doing well in the things that count.” Reminds me of ole Gregg who is always having “A Big Time.” One couple invited her over for supper and after eating a big meal she said, “Now if someone will lead me to the bathroom, I’ll sit on the throne and reign.”

After reading this story it will be hard for you to complain about anything today. You can see or you wouldn’t be reading this blog. You don’t live in a one room apartment on a fixed income do you? Plus many of us have never had to endure the rejection, betrayal and heartbreak of being abandoned by a spouse. Hats off to Helen and all those like her. LORD help us lift someone up today with a smile, cheerful countenance, word of encouragement and maybe even a hug.

Extra

Doc Raley says that the X-ray is not definitive on the rotator tear. The bone spur is there but it will take an MRI to find out about the rotator cuff. It is scheduled for next Monday.

PTL we jumped another hurdle yesterday, we got our lawn mower shed up. We moved the entire shed in tack by using Buddy’s crane that goes on the forks of the tractor. I lifted the entire thing and with Jeremy’s help, it is on the post this morning. Hallelujah! As soon as we can get a dump truck in the back with a load of gravel, we will be in business. Our tomatoes vines are literally loaded. I believe this black soil is going to be the great for gardening.

Today’s agenda is study, lunch meeting and retirement home visitation and then Bible Study at the POINT.

I hope you have a great day and thanks for reading the blog.

Extra/Extra

HOMEWORK: To find the opposite of Helen in the story above, go to Charles Dickens GREAT EXPECTATIONS and read the story of Miss Havisham. She got stood up on her wedding day. If memory serves me right, she never took her wedding gown off, stopped all the clocks in her house, let the cake sit on the table till he rotted.