We'll Understand It Better By and By -- Charles A. Tindley

Ever wonder how the sermons of Charles Albert Tindley may have sounded? You don’t have to speculate too much what he might have said to comfort and inspire the listeners in the Philadelphia church where he spoke one Sunday in the first decade of the 1900s. “We’ll Understand It Better By and By” (also known as “When the Morning Comes”), he advised and urged his hearers. To exercise patience in the face of adversity was no small concession for many who heard him at the time. Nevertheless, he well knew of what he spoke, because he’d been there himself, struggling especially in his early life against slavery and its effects. And though he’d come a long way, Charles wasn’t content when he could see that the surrounding culture still wore heavily upon people. And so, he recommended an alternative perspective, one that he trusted would transport them all to another plane.

Charles Tindley was both a preacher and musical poet-composer, a multi-tasker who eventually crafted several dozen songs, many of which were also thematically linked to his sermon topics. By the time he was 53 years old in 1904, he’d experienced plenty to provide sermon topics and musical words that would become hallmarks of his life. Perhaps it was the circumstances of someone in the Philadelphia church that spawned his words about endurance in “We’ll Understand…”, but he also reportedly recalled one Sunday morning the bible episodes in which Jesus’ closest comrades, the 12 Apostles, likewise needed patience. ‘Why can’t you make haste to set up your kingdom, and save us?’, you can imagine Tindley may have said, in paraphrasing the Apostles who tried to coax Jesus. Did Tindley think that a song might make his message resonate just a bit more? Every one of his four poetic verses begins with a recitation of difficult circumstances, but ends with the song’s title words. Don’t forget to endure until the end, so that you’ll understand it better as you look in the review mirror, he says. Charles didn’t try to deny there were ‘howling tempests’ (v.1), ‘barren lands’ (v.2), ‘dark trials’ (v.3), and ‘hidden snares’ (v.4) along the path, for he’d seen his share of those. Poverty-stricken, lacking a formal early education, and orphaned as a youngster – these were all realities of Charles’ early life. Yet, they failed to stop this young man from learning on his own, working, sometimes without pay, and eventually becoming a janitor at the church where he’d later become a minister. Many years lay between his beginning and where he found himself by 1904 when he spoke the words about ‘understanding’ and the ‘by and by’.  

Charles’ 1904 sermon-song was something he must have replayed many times over in the nearly three decades that followed until his death in 1933. Even so, he wasn’t one to casually stand by and watch the suffering of people, or to stay quiet when he thought injustice needed an opponent. He persuaded business people and elected officials in the Philadelphia area to help those in need of jobs, housing, and food. He also opposed social events that perpetuated racial bigotry, even at the risk of physical harm to himself. For Tindley, perhaps looking backward in the ‘by and by’ was best contemplated remembering the compassion he could show others. Tindley was evidently taking a page from some other historical figure’s playbook – urging others to look heavenward with hope and patience, while also taking action to help others aching because of social prejudice. Any idea who that other guy was?          

     

See more information on the song story in this source: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.

Brief information about the author is here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/t/i/n/tindley_ca.htm

Also see this link, showing all the song’s words: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/w/e/l/u/welunder.htm

See author’s biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Albert_Tindley

Stand By Me -- Charles Albert Tindley

He was no doubt looking back a bit, and reflecting on the previous 50-plus years spent overcoming. Charles Albert Tindley might have thought he had finally accomplished something by 1905, but perhaps he never lost sight of where he’d been when he uttered the prayer “Stand By Me”. The Philadelphia church (see its picture here) where he ministered would eventually wear his name, but that wouldn’t change his mind about who’s church it really was, and to whom he owed his life’s purpose. He’d been through too many episodes, and many lay in front of him, for him to forget the God whom he must have felt was his mainstay. Charles Tindley had plenty of reminders, including in the people around himself, to keep his faith centered on the object of his prayer.

Charles Tindley was what some people might have called a self-made man, although his song’s words would not have agreed with such an assertion. Lacking formal education through his entire life, this black man and son of a slave nevertheless was a determined person who learned on his own to read and write by his late teens, and then went to night school while working as a janitor to acquire his divinity degree through correspondence. He would probably tell us if he were here today that he had plenty of help from tutors along the way, but his own ambition –such as working for little or no pay, in the post-Civil War era –also spurred his climb. He was formally ordained into ministry in the late 1880s, despite the lack of a degree. Capping his rise, Charles became the full-time pastor of a Philadelphia church where he had been a janitor, following some 15 years of short-term stints at several churches in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Tindley had endured to attain the position in the city of brotherly love by 1902, so it must have still been fresh in his mind as a 50-something just how far and how long he’d been engaged in this ascent. Indeed, he had been hiking up a virtual mountain his entire life. He wasn’t satisfied with his own status, however. Others around him needed jobs, food, and homes, so it became part of Tindley’s mission over the next several years to work to secure a better existence for his church’s members through the cooperation and assistance of the business community in the city. Some of the words he penned in ‘Stand By Me’ could be considered autobiographical, but he must have been observing life’s struggles through the eyes of many others in the early 1900s, too. Each of the five stanzas he wrote pointed toward skirmishes probably he had experienced or that his friends were experiencing. Raging storms (v.1), tribulation (v.2), faults and failures (v.3), persecution (v.4), and finally the frailty of old age (v.5) were all in Charles’ field of vision. The answer for all was the same: a look heavenward, and a call for the strength of His presence.    

One can imagine that Charles Tindley kept singing his prayer beyond 1905. Through the following decade, and probably beyond, Tindley and others protested racist events in Philadelphia, suffering physical abuse that was all-too common during the era, and not just in the Jim-Crow South. It was a time when many blacks must have felt that God, and too-few white folks in the nation, really cared about their plight. Tindley’s church grew from 130 to over 12,000 by the time of his death two decades later, probably as people clung to one another for support and looked above for solace. Today, you could say some things have improved. But, ‘stand by me’ isn’t a phrase that’s obsolete because the early 1900s has passed. New era, with the same issues in new skin. Same God, too.    

     

See more information on the song story in this source: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.

Brief information about the author is here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/t/i/n/tindley_ca.htm

Also see this link, showing all the song’s words: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/s/t/a/n/standbym.htm

See author’s biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Albert_Tindley