GHS 7 - Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

Описание: Helen Lemmel (1863-1961), a gifted singer, was born in England to a Methodist minister and his wife. Her family moved to the United States when she was 12 years old. Her parents recognized her musical gifts, and made it possible for her to study with good teachers.

I have had some difficulty piecing together the sequence of Lemmel’s life, but I think it went something like this:

• She moved to Seattle in 1904 (age 41), where she served as the music critic for the Seattle-Post Intelligencer for three years.

• She went to Germany to study music, and stayed there four years.

• Upon her return to the United States, she had a successful concert career—and also taught music for a number of years at the Moody Bible Institute.

• She actively supported Billy Sunday’s evangelistic ministry, and wrote “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus” in 1922 to be used in those meetings.

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.

After retiring, Lemmel moved back to Seattle, where she lived until her death at age 97 in 1961. #joy_hymns #joy_songs #madenn10 #joy_hymns #joy_songs #madenn10