Maybe he
was reflecting on his own conversion some years earlier – was this the impetus
for what he penned as a 36-year old musical publisher-composer? Harry D. Clarke
would have had many reasons to look back and wonder to himself how his life
might have been very different had circumstances evolved in other ways, and if
God had not come “Into My (his) Heart” when He did. Sioux City, Iowa (see the
map here) was a significant place in Harry’s world – there are several indications
of this – making this one place where he could have been when asking God into
his life, perhaps for the first time or on subsequent occasions for renewal. He
was like so many others who examined himself honestly, and saw a yawning gap
between whom he wanted to be and who he really was. He’d concluded that only One
presence could make the difference.
Harry D. Clarke
had come through so very much by the time that he was 36 and living a life that
he hardly could have imagined two decades earlier. He was an orphan who sought
escape from his youth as a seaman for 10 years in Britain in the late 19th-early
20th Century, an inauspicious beginning for any youngster’s life.
Fortunately, with the aid of a brother, he made his way to London and then to
North America, finally arriving in the United States after a brief interlude in
Canada. Was it at this point in his life, on a new continent and far from
familiar surroundings, that Harry first asked for God’s intervention, to come ‘into
my heart’? Something revolutionary occurred, as the rest of Clarke’s life unfolded
in a way much different than had been the case through most of his teenage
years. His education at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and his close
association with the evangelists Harry vom Bruch and Billy Sunday were firm
evidence that Clarke’s conversion – indeed, God’s entry into his heart – was genuine.
Harry was following in the footsteps of these two men, particularly Sunday, as
he launched into music as a composer-publisher, and also into evangelism by the
mid-1920s. He undoubtedly had a resonant story that made his witness compelling
to listeners; without parents since his early childhood, one can imagine Harry telling
of his adoption into God’s family with an uncommon personal conviction. God must
have indeed been Harry’s resolution for a ‘burden of sin’ (v.2), and a
cleansing and illumination (v.3) for a troubled and weary soul (v.1). Perhaps like
some others to whom he spoke, Harry may have remembered with overwhelming
regret lots of episodes in 10 years as a seaman, as well as other incidents early
in his youth. Life need not be a ‘dreary way’ (v.2), if you just ask him to
come in, Harry reasoned.
Much of
Harry Clarke’s life must have been spent in the Midwest around Sioux City
telling others about his heart’s connection with the indwelling Spirit. He established
the Billy Sunday Memorial Chapel in Sioux City, and was a pastor in the city until
1945; he was also buried there following his death in 1957. Clarke also served
as an evangelist in Pennsylvania and Indiana, showing that his message was not
confined to Iowa. Neither is the Spirit’s ability limited in His joining with
those who need Him. As Harry may have surmised, He can enter anyone, but a
certain desperation and desolation are preconditions for His movement. He won’t
overpower, but He can guide, even control someone who is willing. Are you
willing?
See here
for some biographic information on the author: https://hymnary.org/tune/into_my_heart_clarke
