This World Is Not My Home -- Albert E. Brumley

He was on his third place of earthly abode when he declared that he wasn’t really satisfied with the places he’d lived. Albert Brumley said “This World Is Not My Home”, so he wasn’t really trying to accuse any place’s residents of being unfriendly, namely Spiro, Oklahoma where he’d grown up, Hartford, Arkansas where he’d gone to music school, and Powell, Missouri where he had met his wife and lived with his family in 1936 (see the map). It was a pretty rough time all over, during the Great Depression, so perhaps that underscored Albert’s inclination to yearn for a place beyond this planet to call home. It was a musical habit that was one of Brumley’s trademarks.

Music and faith were wound into Albert Edward Brumley from an early age, making his life’s passion that he lived out into his early 70s a calling he undertook with conviction, despite the economic poverty from which he sprang. His inauspicious start as the son of cotton sharecroppers left him with meager resources to pursue the music that he decided by age 16 was his path. But, his upbringing by parents of Christian faith, who also routinely used music in the home as a socializing tool in the community, gave Albert dual drives to overcome the financial hurdles. He also found a Christian music benefactor in Hartford in neighboring Arkansas – Eugene Bartlett – who gave Albert his start in formal training and a music publishing business there. Singing schools that he conducted and marriage – to Goldie, whom he met in Missouri – would also contribute to Albert’s progression. Albert’s composing habits, to write his ideas on various scraps of paper and to make Goldie his sounding board, are probably the background to most of his songs, including ‘This World…Home’. This 31-year old musical master – reportedly, some might have labeled him an oddball – was undoubtedly living in Powell, and still working out his musical ideas with his wife and the music company Bartlett owned, when he penned the words about home in 1936. What led he him to write them is not clear, yet his theme about the Christian life’s destination is not uncommon among the hundreds of songs attributed to him. He thought about his eternal inheritance a lot. Heaven = Home. If Brumley had been a math genius, that’s the eternal equation he would have authored.           

Got a clear picture of heaven? I don’t think I look often enough, honestly, to say what it is I see behind the most obvious facade. Is it awesome? Yes. But, Albert thought it was more appealing to draw a picture of God’s goodness to stir his spirit. The Lord is his ‘friend’, and angels coax him toward the goal (v. 1, and refrain). Albert also sensed that others are waiting, rooting, and celebrating (vv.2-3) as the day of reunion approaches. Has earthly life been good, or not so much for you? Look ahead, and see if you can imagine it the way Albert did. That’s the best therapy for what goes on here.  

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.  

  

See a thorough biography of the author/composer here: 

http://www.therestorationmovement.com/_states/tennessee/brumley.htm

 

See brief biography of the author/composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_E._Brumley

And, here: https://hymnary.org/person/Brumley_Albert

Here, also: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/b/r/u/brumley_ae.htm

 

See biography on composer in Our Garden of Song, edited by Gene C. Finley, Howard Publishing Company, West Monroe, Louisiana, 1980.