If you’ve not heard the name Haldor Lillenas, you may in fact know something about him through a song that sounds familiar, perhaps one that appears to be written by Virginia Rose Golden, Laverne Gray, Richard Hainsworth, Rev. H. N. Lines, Robert Whitmore or Ferne Winters. They’re all pseudonyms that Lillenas used to publish his own songs. If you’ve ever been in a church (especially a Nazarene church), you may have sung one of his 4,000 hymns, perhaps the most well-known of which is “Wonderful Grace of Jesus”. Or, maybe you’ve sung from some sheet music that came from the Lillenas Music (Publishing) Company. He’s the same guy, a Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductee in 1982.
Lillenas wrote the song “Wonderful Grace of Jesus” in 1918. He was in his early 30’s (32/33 years old), and the pastor of a Nazarene church in Auburn, Illinois. He and his wife Bertha Mae had little to no money after buying a home nearby, but that didn’t impede Lillenas’s productivity. With $5, he bought a rundown organ from a neighbor, and composed this song soon thereafter. His family’s strong faith had been evident in Lillenas’s early life, probably even before their emigration from Norway to the United States in the 1880s. But, it may have been the events in 1906 that set the stage for Lillenas’s spiritual growth and the genesis of the song. That year in Astoria, Oregon, Lillenas committed himself to Christian work, in the wake of his mother’s death and the fervor he felt hearing and singing the songs in that place. Particularly in Portland, Lillenas saw many people come to Christ, an experience that further solidified his decision to work for Him. The impact of God’s grace apparently stuck with Lillenas over the next decade-plus, as he studied and ministered in Oregon and California.
What would happen if I thought about God’s grace for more than a decade? How long would it take to say all that the subject deserves? Might it be something outrageous, akin to Jonah’s experience of being swallowed by a fish (see the picture above)? That was some grace, wasn’t it?! It seems like those were the thoughts Lillenas was mulling over as he composed the song, considering its words. The theme he dwells on is the grandeur, the extreme nature of this grace. One senses that what Lillenas had seen or felt by 1918 overwhelmed him. ‘Greater than all’, ‘the most’, ‘the uttermost’, ‘for all’, ‘matchless’…these are some of the phrases that Lillenas employs to express his feelings about God’s gift. A doubter might accuse him of hyperbole – after all, how great can a song be that was composed on a $5 organ? But, this is just how our God is -- nothing posh is required for Him. You think God will have this ‘cheap’ grace-song playing for us along the streets of gold?
Biographic information on the composer found in the following:
“The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs”, by William J. and Ardythe Petersen, 2006, Tyndale House Publishers.
No comments:
Post a Comment