Heaven Holds All to Me -- Tillit Sydney Teddlie

He evidently wanted his own gravestone to be a signpost, substituting for his voice in the time after which he expected to be gone. This fellow was pretty thoughtful, intentional, and hopeful that what words he crafted might survive his own mortal existence, and so it was when Tillit Sydney Teddlie wrote “Earth Holds No Treasures” (perhaps more commonly known as “Heaven Holds All to Me”) early in his life. He lived his entire life in Texas, but that wasn’t the home he thought about, and so he spent a notable amount of his time poetically reminding himself and others where he thought home would be. He couldn’t have known how many years into the future this expectation would endure before bearing fruit, but that’s how dreams affix themselves in one’s consciousness – over time. This poet demonstrated, well-past an average person’s retirement age, that a patience while awaiting one’s inheritance for many decades after first envisioning it doesn’t mean standing still.   

Tillit and his wife had the words of “Heaven Holds All…” inscribed on the memorial stone marking the site of their burial ground. It’s a shortened, bumper-sticker-like phrase that points to the longer version of what Teddlie thought about this eternity subject. Tillit was a 30-year old, still relatively young and less than one-third of the way toward his goal, as it would turn out, in 1915; he lived until 1987, having passed the century-mark two years earlier. Tillit was most likely somewhere in northeast Texas, in one of several small towns or perhaps in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, when he wrote about the abode where he would go some 70 years into the future. He was frequently engaged in teaching singing, a skill he’d first begun as a teenager over a decade earlier, though his talents weren’t limited to music. He preached at half a dozen churches in this region over his lifetime, while writing approximately 130 songs and publishing more than a dozen songbooks. His part in singing schools, where he taught others how use their vocal skills via reading shape notes in printed music, must have touched the lives of thousands of people over the course of six decades. How many more people would have encountered Tillit and his heavenward message while sitting near a pulpit or by using a songbook? He didn’t complicate it too much, but showed some unpretentious words were golden. The ‘treasures (that)…perish’ (v.1) and ‘world(ly)…sorrows’ (v.3) just didn’t stack up against a ‘joy without measure’ (refrain) he aimed to inherit. What he sought was invaluable. No one can calculate a songwriter’s impact, especially when his subject is so universally true for all of us. 

Though Tillit did not share the particular episode that inspired his poem, we can guess its words grew out of his everyday perspective. After all, what else would a preacher-songwriter, who was engaged in spreading good news, be thinking about virtually every day? He must have known of the adage regarding how to catch flies – you attract them to something (like honey), rather than trying to chase them away from where you don’t want them to be. Tillit must have known that no one could argue with or run away from being ‘happy, contented, and free’ (v. 2). He called it a ‘wonderful country’. My everyday life in America is pretty nice, but there are frustrations too, routinely. Tillit would, no doubt, have recommended an alternative.       

Brief biography is here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/t/e/d/teddlie_ts.htm

A more thorough portrayal of composer’s life is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillit_Sidney_Teddlie

See his obituary here: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/11006462

No Tears in Heaven -- Robert Sterling Arnold

Take a look at this picture. Looks rather ordinary, right? Small-town, anywhere, America, though this one happens to be Coleman, Texas in 2009. It’s just about right in the center of that great state, and home of one Robert Sterling Arnold, the writer of “No Tears in Heaven” in the year 1935. Like the geographic position of his hometown, Robert’s words in ‘No Tears…’ are central to the faith that he must have adopted pretty early in his life from a family of like believers deep in the heart of what’s known as ‘the bible-belt’. His sentiments in the song have an upbeat quality, though one might be surprised to discover that this buoyant message is peppered with the word ‘no’. In this case, negativity is stood on its head. Isn’t that kind of how we feel our Creator behaves when mortal life is done – He outwits death for us!

Robert Arnold’s upbringing may have been small-town style, but what he would ultimately do with the music to which he attached himself would broaden his horizons, while coaxing others who’d sing his music to think even bigger. Robert was singing by the time he was a teenager, following lots of education at singing schools at the hands of multiple teachers. Part of his musical ability may also have been more or less familial, including via one cousin (Eddie Arnold, a well-known country-western music artist) with whom he shared the same last name. Robert was soon doing radio shows and involving himself in the publishing business, too. Writing at least a handful of hymns was just part of the terrain that Robert’s vocation and his faith directed him to walk. By the time he was 30 years old, Robert had married (Cora) someone who also loved music, and so she may have played a role in what he wrote just a few years after their union. The Arnolds were indeed a twosome that owned and operated the National Music Company and published various musical products throughout several decades of the 20^th Century. Robert would eventually be inducted into the Texas and Southern Gospel Music Halls of Fame in 1985 and 2005, respectively. Quite an honor for a kid from Coleman, huh? Perhaps Robert would have just thought that was icing, compared to the life he lived, doing what he obviously loved and pointing others upward. No tears, no sorrow, no sadness, (no) pain, and no pondering (or even brooding over) one’s life…that’s what gave Robert reason to write and celebrate about what lay ahead.   

Robert’s life sounds like a full one, even if he thought an eternity without some things was something to celebrate. Perhaps he’d had his share of some unhappy moments, pain (either physical or emotional), or some regrets. It’s not unusual for anyone to wish for those facets of mortal life to vanish for good in the afterlife. Even God Himself experienced them while here, and tells us his abode up there will be different (Revelation 21:4), as He concludes his written, revelatory letter to us. Robert Arnold is just reminding us that that guarantee still holds.  

A brief biography of the composer is here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/a/r/n/arnold_rs.htm

See here also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sterling_Arnold

Biographical information on the composer also obtained from the book “Our Garden of Song”, edited by Gene C. Finley, Howard Publishing Company, 1980.

Mansion Over the Hilltop -- Ira F. Stanphill

A little poverty-stricken girl and a businessman, probably unaware that their chance encounter would motivate a songwriter, met in a rural area near Dallas, and that’s where this multi-pronged story began to take shape. Their names remain unrecorded, but what they said was unforgettable to Ira Stanphill’s ears, as he thought one morning about a “Mansion Over the Hilltop” that the child and the businessman had mentioned on two different levels. That this song’s genesis involved three different people, each from a different circumstance, illustrates yet again how much like a fingerprint a song can be. A songwriter like Ira may often hear a story that captures his imagination, but the path each song travels is unique, allowing us as to appreciate that each one is special, with twists and turns not unlike the loops, whorls, and arches (forensic terms in the science of fingerprint analysis) that whet the appetite of a musical detective. Yum!

The circumstances that coalesced one evening when Ira Stanphill attended a revival are the fingerprint of ‘Mansion Over a Hilltop’. Ira was in his early 30s in 1945 when he was doing what a preacher, musician, and songwriter in the Gospel genre like himself would consider normal: He was attending a conference that he probably expected would stimulate his passion, and hopefully that of many others, for God. A businessman who’d had a rough time, but who’d also had an epiphany, was speaking. Business had been bad, and this struggling entrepreneur had sought some relief in a drive through a rural area. He found more than he’d thought he would, and unexpectedly from a small child, too. Her appearance perhaps reminded him of his own situation – a poor waif, with a broken doll, standing next to a ramshackle house she called home. Yet, she smiled. Why? Because she had hope, with her father building a brand-new home not far away, over the nearby hill. What a gift hope is, the downtrodden man thought, not just for what we might attain in this world to overcome destitution, but especially how this world’s cruelties will be overcome by what awaits the believer in the afterlife. ‘My mansion is secure’, the businessman reassured himself when he thought of his future with God. That spoke to Ira similarly, and after sleeping on the message he’d heard, he quickly wrote “Mansion Over the Hilltop”.

From a little girl’s hopeful answer, through one discouraged adult’s heart, and into the soul of a poet-songwriter who could put a musical exclamation mark at the conclusion of this episode, this account reiterates for us that He’s at work. Is it just coincidental how things happen for good, even in difficult times? The businessman noted as he related his story to Ira and the assembled crowd, that his heart was pierced by the unsuspecting girl’s hope-filled words. Could that, in fact, be God nudging you and me, as if to say ‘I’m here…and I haven’t forgotten you’? I’ve had at least one life episode in which I thought I felt that nudge. Coincidentally, the first one that I remember, like the businessman’s situation, involved my professional/vocational life. ‘Will I be a failure?’, I remember calling out to Him in my angst one day. He answered ‘No, you won’t be’, not too soon thereafter, and I skipped like a deer, rejoicing that He’d touched me that way. I’ve never forgot that He sent me on my way, to live my vocational dream, and to experience life in a kind of mansion for the last three decades. You and I just need to remember that another hilltop’s view will reveal an altogether different edifice – words cannot do it justice. Climb that hill!      

The primary source for the story on this song is the book Stories Behind Popular Songs and Hymns, by Lindsay Terry, Baker Book House, 1990. Also, see The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.