My Prayer…My Song…I Need Thee Every Hour

“For in him we live, move and have our being;…” Acts 17:28a 

I need the every hour, Most gracious LORD, No tender voice like Thine, Can peace afford.

Paul addressed the council in Athens regarding their religiosity.  Theirs was religion that had led them to even inscribe an altar TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.  The Apostle sets the record straight–“It is plain to see that you Athenians take your religion seriously. When I arrived here the other day, I was fascinated with all the shrines I came across. And then I found one inscribed, to the god nobody knows. I’m here to introduce you to this God so you can worship intelligently, know who you’re dealing with. The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn’t live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn’t take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don’t make him. Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near. We live and move in him, can’t get away from him! One of your poets said it well: ‘We’re the God-created.’”  Acts:17-22-28 MSG

I need Thee every hour;  Stay Thou near by.  Temptations lose their pow’r when Thou art nigh.

As I have considered this hymn, I have recalled that it is also one that I have known from a child.  As I grew into my teen years and began to play it on the piano in Sunday School, and later in worship, I listened intently to the elders and the mothers of the Church whine this hymn out; it was one that always made me feel like they were actually praying the song. The lyrics and music together felt so much like a declaration of praise and adoration.  And the “seasoned saints” appeared to be crying out to God as though they were letting God know that they knew how badly they needed Him.  Those children and grandchildren of African slaves in America (most just one-two generations from slavery) that formed the core strength of the Church of my upbringing were acutely aware of their constant need for God.  Their singing, with or without accompaniment, was most often born of that awareness.  “In addition to religious songs composed in worship and at work and individually authored hymns, African Americans also incorporated Euro-American hymns into their worship.  Rather than retaining the Euro-American structure, hymns were reshaped or improvised in a folklike manner or “blackenized” as a means of contextualization.  To sing hymns as they were heard in formalized settings did not lend itself to the social and spiritual bonding required of Africans in diaspora.  The process of re-creating and improvising hymns was a way of making the music their own.” (Costen, Melva Wilson, African American Christian Worship, 1993).

THE ORIGIN OF I NEED THE EVERY HOUR:  In his book, The Practice of the Presence of God, Brother Lawrence claimed to be as close to God while working in the kitchen as when praying the chapel. The Lord, after all, is always near us, thus wherever we are is holy ground. That was the experience of Annie Hawks, 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 Charles Hawks and they established their home in Brooklyn, joining Dr. Robert Lowry’s Hanson Place Baptist Church.* With the good doctor’s encouragement, she 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. 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.’’   Some time 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 (Morgan, Robert.  Then Sings My Soul: 150 of The World’s Greatest Hymn Stories, Thomas Nelson, 2003).

I need Thee every hour, in joy or pain; Come quickly and abide, or life is vain.

HOW THIS SONG HAS SHAPED MY LIFE:  This “hymn of improvisation” (a term coined and used by Wyatt Tee Walker to arbitrarily explain the “gospelizing” of hymns) is one of the earliest in my repertoire of hymns that once learned from the musical score, I had to learn to improvise or embellish in order to accompany my community of faith as they worshipped in song.  Accompanying them required listening…listening closely to the emotion and the sentiment of the congregation.  It also required feeling…feeling the rhythm of the elders and mothers as they sang.  It required embodiment…embodying the sacred reliance suggested by their expressions and voice inflections.  It required listening…listening to the tonal quality and nuances of a God-reliant people. Listening is required in order to improvise or embellish–in order to “make the music our own.”   (Walker, Wyatt Tee, Somebody’s Calling My Name:  Black Sacred Music and Social Change, Judson Press, 1979).

I need the every hour; teach me Thy will; And Thy rich promises in me fulfill.

Listening was easy and transformative for me.  Hearing, on the other hand, was a bit more difficult.  (Hence, I was not one who played by ear naturally).  Hearing encompassed not only the ears, but the fingers also.  It is as though your fingers, coupled with your learned musical ability, hear better than your ears.  I could always connect with the congregation and what they were doing and feeling while singing, however, I was not always able to translate what I heard to my fingers.  In order to be able to pull off playing in the Church of my upbringing required sitting at the piano for hours just listening and trying to hear; it also required sitting at the piano with those who have the God-given ability to “hear it and play it.”  For me it alsor required recognizing my need for God’s assistance in using the talent He had blessed me to have.

I need Thee every hour; Most Holy One; Oh, Make me Thine indeed; Thou blessed Son.

There was a period in my life when God seemed to me to be THE UNKNOW-ABLE, UNTOUCHABLE GOD, mainly because some things in my life had not turned out the way I had planned or desired.  And I had really thought I was seeking to operate, for the most part, in His will for my life.  I had come to wonder whether or not God was really concerned about or involved in the minor details and routines of my life.  But as I began to mature in my faith and my understanding of His Word, I began to understand their singing of this song.  I was understanding and appreciating why the elders and mothers in the Church of my upbringing had sung with such fervor…such passionate longing and dependence.  I began recognizing just how hopeless and helpless I would be if God had not been holding me.  It was then that Paul’s sermon to the Athenians became a source of direction for me:

• directing me back to God for EACH and EVERY situation
• helping me once again trust His omnipotence
• directing me to realize that ALL my help comes from the LORD!
• Reminding me that every move I make, every breath I take is only by His grace–in Him we live, and move and have our being.

It may be that tonight you are in a place in which I am quite familiar.  You might be hurting.  You might be feeling alone and lonely.  Your heart my be broken.  You may have received horrible news or been unjustly treated by someone you trusted.  You may even feel that God does not care OR have time for your pitiful little problems and issues. And my brother, my sister, nothing could be farther from the truth!  He is present and He is just waiting for you to reach out to Him.  WHATEVER it is, my friend, you NEED The LORD.  And believe me, He wants to bless you!

Oh bless me now, My Savior, I come to Thee!