My Favorite Hymn

I have been wanting to write about this for a while. I think about it frequently because I absolutely LOVE this hymn and think the lyrics are so touching.
It was written by a woman named Emma Lou Thayne and the music was originally composed by Jolene G Meredith.

You can see a video of the MOTAB singing the hymn here

I do like the version you can get from itunes much better though.

THE LYRICS:

Where can I turn for peace?
Where is my solace
When other sources cease to make me whole?
When, with a wounded heart, anger, or malice
I draw myself apart searching my soul?

Where, when my aching grows?
Where, when I languish?
Where, in my need to know?
Where can I run?
Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?
Who, who can understand?
He, only One.

He answers privately.
Reaches my reaching.
In my Gethsemane, Savior, and friend.
Gentle, the peace He finds
For my beseeching.
Constant He is, and kind.
Love without end.

This is a hymn that speaks to our day. "When Other Sources cease to make me whole." As we look around and see how people (and maybe ourselves) try to fill the voids in their lives and fix the pain they feel by turning to other people, alcohol, drugs, sex, money, material possessions, etc. As Dr Phil would say, "How's that working for ya?" The Savior is the only one who can truly understand what we are feeling. He has suffered every agony, every misery and, if we go to him, he will provide the peace we need in these times.


I've always enjoyed learning about how songs were created. The story of how this hymn was written is an interesting one. In 1971, the author and composer were asked to create a hymn for a Young Womens conference. They were able to write the melody in one phone call to each other!

The text had a deeply personal meaning to Jolene Meredith. The words for the hymn came from a very troubling time in her family's life. She had 4 children under 17 who had needs, she was facing a spinal fusion which would put her career teaching at the University of Utah on hold, one daughter was ill, and her husband had become Bishop of a student ward.

In 1985, the hymn was published in the new LDS hymnal. At that time she recalled the feelings she had when writing the hymn and how vital they were to her even then. Five months after it was published, a crowbar went through her windshield on the freeway, fracturing 8 bones in her face. During this time she faced a prompting for the searching that this song talks of and is grateful for "the unbelievably timely resurrection of the song that has helped so much in my own recent resurrection, a resurrection of what I might never have known without the trial and without the granted grace of the impulse to reach."

"In my Gethsemane, Savior, and friend. Gentle, the peace He finds" I love these words. This text is quite possibly the most sincere, honest testimony I have ever heard in song. I am struck every time I hear it and tears well up in my eyes knowing the truth of these verses. That when we go through our own Gethsemane, what we search for can only be found through the Savior. "Who, who can understand? He, only One." I am so blessed to know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and Redeemer. He can provide me with the calm and peacefulness that I desire when I am troubled. I need to remember this and humble myself before the Lord when I need him. How great it is that our Savior loves us so much! I cant wait to meet him again!