Before he
retired, he’d been selling insurance, but he was also writing about assurance
in 1935. He’d sold many insurance policies to people while living out the last
four decades of his life in New Jersey, yet the assurance guarantee that Thomas
Obediah Chisholm grasped in ‘Bring Christ Your Broken Life” was not written on
a piece of paper like the other policies he’d sold. Nevertheless, the people for
whom his poetry was intended probably needed to be both insured and assured, if
his words were in fact meant for people who’d had a lot of struggles. Thomas himself
was not immune to difficulties, so what he penned was not a sterile, impersonal
prescription, but one that he likely had consumed, perhaps multiple times. Thomas
was an intermediary, recommending to those who were willing to look, a protection
plan from the Divine One who was higher than himself – the CEO, if you want to
think of Him that way. The Creator-Eternal-One (CEO) still offers it today.
Thomas
Chisholm had a circuitous route toward the 69th year in which he lived
and wrote about what to do with ‘…Your Broken Life’. He spent roughly the first
40 years in Kentucky, where he was born, educated, and worked – as an editor,
and after his ordination, briefly as a minister in 1903. When his health forced
a change, Thomas and his family moved to Indiana for a brief time. It was there
that Chisholm took up insurance sales as his professional calling, which he
continued when the Chisholms moved to New Jersey in 1916. So, by 1935, Thomas
had been in a variety of situations, not all of which he could have evaluated positively.
His own health, a war (World War I) that he lived through, and an economic
depression in the 1930s that was worse than anyone had seen before must have
made Thomas’ pitch for insurance and assurance a credible message to people he
encountered. Many a ‘broken life’ and countless who’d lived through some ‘empty,
wasted years’ (v.1) may have crossed paths with Thomas, who could have shared
his own experiences with them in empathy. How many ‘care(s)’, ‘haunting fears’,
and ‘dread’ (v.2) did Thomas listen to before he wrote this poem, offering hearers
some hope? At 69 years old, was Thomas being autobiographical when he wrote
about ‘weariness’ and ‘blinding tears’ (v.3), or was he thinking of someone to
whom he was close? Whatever drove Thomas to write ‘Bring Christ…’, he didn’t
choose to think exclusively about the ‘dark’ and ‘drear’ (v.4), but juxtaposed
those with a solution…or, rather, the Solver.
The contrast
between the first two words of the hymn’s title, ‘Bring Christ’, and its last
three words, ‘Your Broken Life’, make Chisholm’s message especially notable. Words
like ‘anew’, ‘whole’, ‘restore’ (v.1); ‘relieve’ and ‘lift’ (v.2); ‘love’, ‘wonderful’,
‘power’, and ‘great’ (v.3)
permeate Thomas’ poetry, despite the references to life’s valleys. He reminds his
audience that bringing Christ can overturn the broken life. It’s not just an exercise
in complaining to Him, but rather accessing His compassionate spirit and
catching at least a glimpse of His rest. One can presume that Thomas felt that
way again and again, since he lived well into his 90s (93 years old) and wrote hundreds
of poems that became hymns. As life mounted, with all of its attendant issues,
Chisholm must have pulled out ‘Bring Christ…’ many times to clear his vision of
the finish line. And, he must have imagined beyond that too, to the ‘morning
break (ing)’ (v.4). Can you see the morning sun yet?
See
biography on composer here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/c/h/i/chisholm_to.htm
No comments:
Post a Comment