This writer was feeling self-conscious, so perhaps she was praying for more of His consciousness. Maybe Clara H. Scott wondered whether all of her senses were engaged, prompting her to ask God to “Open My Eyes, That I May See”. It seems that she was looking a lot further out than the Iowa landscape, where she’d spent most of her life (see its flag here). Was it in fact more than visual clarity that Clara sought, as she looked about her surroundings and thought about her disposition to serve Him with her whole being? Was she attuned to listening to others even, as she mulled over her prayer that day? From what she penned, it seems her poem’s title words indeed originated with an ancient anonymous poet, meaning that an echo emerged from her being that was centuries old.
Clara Scott might have been around 54 years old when she asked God to open her eyes by the last few years of the 19th Century, but she had been sensitive to His leading for many years by the time she penned this musical prayer. She was still a teenager in the mid-19th Century when she attended a music school in Chicago and then went on to teach at a seminary in northwestern Iowa a few years later. She eventually authored up to four publications, filled with her vocal and instrumental musical compositions, by the end of her life. ‘Open My Eyes…’ was apparently written and published (in 1895) just two years before she died tragically in an accident. She was well-schooled and adept in her musical vocation at that point, but does one ever stop learning? From her viewpoint, was she also still trying to teach students what must come from within a writer-composer’s spirit, in order to please the giver of musical talent? Either or both of these attitudes could have motivated Clara to ask for open eyes (v.1) and ears (v.2); and for a mouth and heart (v.3) willing to communicate His principles. Clara may have looked to an ancient psalm (Psalm 119:18) for the reminder and inspiration she needed for her verses. The ancient writer sought Him out, but could he have realistically expected to exhaust the well of wisdom that God possesses, even in the bible’s longest book, and its longest set of verses (176 verses are in Psalm 119)? That would not have been an uncommon thought, if Clara’s mind went there as she read what her songwriting ancestor shared with his readers. How does one communicate with the inexhaustible God, and become more like Him in musical verse? That’s what Clara was after.
What more could be said of Clara Scott? It’s instructive, that while Clara’s works filled four publications, and one might say they sum up her life, she said something quite different in her own words in ‘Open My Eyes…’. She says she waited ‘silently’ for His Spirit (refrain). That speaks louder than all the other works she wrote, perhaps, to inform us who Clara Scott really was. She was His, or at least she wanted to be. She wasn’t looking at herself, except to see how He formed and moved her own spirit. She might have been a 19th Century poetess-composer, but she wasn’t averse to looking backward to another writer two or three millennia old, to find what she really wanted. That ancient writer felt the same way. All of us should share that goal, no matter what century we occupy.
See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; and Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990.
See brief biography of the author here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/c/o/t/scott_chj.htm
See all three of the hymn’s original verses and the refrain here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/o/p/e/n/openeyes.htm
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