Positive Daily Inspiration – August 6, 2022 – Saturday Inspiration

(Submitted with our great thanks)

“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”
Genesis 1:3

Birth of the song “Precious Lord”

I’ve never heard this story before. It gives the words to the song even more meaning!

Back in 1932 I was 32 years old and a fairly new husband. My wife, Nettie and I were living in a little apartment on Chicago’s Southside. One hot August afternoon I had to go to St. Louis, where I was to be the featured soloist at a large revival meeting.

I didn’t want to go. Nettie was in the last month of pregnancy with our first child. But a lot of people were expecting me in St. Louis. I kissed Nettie good-bye, clattered downstairs to our Model A and, in a fresh Lake Michigan breeze, chugged out of Chicago on Route 66. However, outside the city, I discovered that in my anxiety at leaving, I had forgotten my music case. I wheeled around and headed back. I found Nettie sleeping peacefully. I hesitated by her bed; something was strongly telling me to stay. But eager to get on my way, and not wanting to disturb Nettie, I shrugged off the feeling and quietly slipped out of the room with my music.

The next night, in the steaming St. Louis heat, the crowd called on me to sing again and again. When I finally sat down, a messenger boy ran up with a Western Union telegram. I ripped open the envelope. Pasted on the yellow sheet were the words: YOUR WIFE JUST DIED. People were happily singing and clapping around me, but I could hardly keep from crying out. I rushed to a phone and called home. All I could hear on the other end was “Nettie is dead. Nettie is dead.”

When I got back, I learned that Nettie had given birth to a boy. I swung between grief and joy. Yet that night, the baby died. I buried Nettie and our little boy together, in the same casket.

Then I fell apart. For days I closeted myself. I felt that God had done me an injustice. I didn’t want to serve Him anymore or write gospel songs. I just wanted to go back to that jazz world I once knew so well.

But then, as I hunched alone in that dark apartment those first sad days, I thought back to the afternoon I went to St. Louis. Something kept telling me to stay with Nettie. Was that something God? Oh, if I had paid more attention to Him that day, I would have stayed and been with Nettie when she died. From that moment on I vowed to listen more closely to Him. But still I was lost in grief.

Everyone was kind to me, especially a friend, Professor Fry, who seemed to know what I needed. On the following Saturday evening he took me up to Malone’s College, a neighborhood music school. It was quiet; the late evening sun crept through the curtained windows. I sat down at the piano, and my hands began to browse over the keys. Something happened to me then. I felt at peace. I felt as though I could reach out and touch God. I found myself playing a melody, one into my head-they just seemed to fall into place:

Precious Lord, take my hand,
Lead me on, let me stand!
I am tired, I am weak,
I am worn,
Through the storm,
Through the night lead me on to the light,
Take my hand, precious Lord,
Lead me home.

The Lord gave me these words and melody; He also healed my spirit. I learned that when we are in our deepest grief, when we feel farthest from God, this is when He is closest, and when we are most open to His restoring power. And so I go on living for God willingly and joyfully, until that day comes when God will take me and gently lead me home.

The great gospel writer Thomas Andrew Dorsey wrote this song. What a wonderful story of how God CAN heal the brokenhearted.

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POSITIVE DAILY PRAYER:

Dear God, You are my help in every need.

You are here. I know, from the core of my being, that You are with me now. Through You, and only through You, I can overcome any obstacle to peace of mind. I can overcome any limitation. I can live in freedom and self-mastery.

Through Your activity, God, I feel a comfort and a tranquility that passes human understanding.

Jesus promised, “You will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free.”

Now it is time for me to let go of my lists of human weaknesses and limitations. You free me now, God, to live a fuller, happier, more useful and more satisfying life.

Now it is time for me to let go of my human sense of trouble and difficulties. I let go of everything not to the level of Christ consciousness and center my full attention, my whole being, on Your spiritual help with me and all around me.

Dear God, I give You my full attention in this moment, and I see the result. I get my personal self out of the way so that the Divine can emerge.

In my awareness, I feel a harmonizing calm, a complete confidence and the victorious blessedness that always emanates from Your close Presence and quiet, steady, purposeful activity.

Harmony and wholeness, vitality, power and plenty, You become that to me AND MORE.
God, You are with me, right now.
I give You my full human attention.
I go to You every day, abide in You every moment, and consciously let You perform Your work.
I consciously let You live in me and through me and all around me, and I am aided, strengthened, and guided in ways that I have not yet dreamed of in human mind.

In Jesus Christ’s name, Amen

POSITIVE DAILY AFFIRMATION: With God’s help I can face any adversity with grace.

POSITIVE DAILY QUOTE: “The goal is not always meant to be reached, but to serve as a mark for our aim.” Joseph Joubert

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GOD BLESS YOU,
Christopher Ian Chenoweth