He didn’t sound like a struggler, or someone who still regretted mistakes he’d made decades before. Thomas Obediah Chisholm had been through so many life changes by the mid-1930s, when this 69-year-old believer was living in the small, southern New Jersey city of Vineland (see the map, showing Cumberland County, where it is located), that he could readily have appreciated having an anchor to which he could cling. Yet, ‘cling’ doesn’t adequately describe the mental state that Thomas related musically as “A New Creature”. He evidently felt that an old life had long ago been relegated to the trash heap, compared to the new life that he was enjoying. One might say that Thomas was really reveling in this new way. Is this a good New Year’s resolution – to revel in newness, in a transformation, instead of just saying ‘no’ to an old destructive existence?
Thomas O. Chisholm was living in his third state and working in his fourth career as he reflected on being “A New Creature” in 1935. He’d started as a teacher and later as an editor in Kentucky, during which time he’d become a Christian in his late 20s. For a very short time in his mid-30s, he was subsequently a minister serving in a small-town southern Kentucky church. Then, his poor health compelled his family’s move to Indiana, where he made another vocational course change to become an insurance salesman. By 1916, the Chisholms had relocated once again, this time to Vineland, New Jersey, where 50-year old Thomas continued making a living in the insurance business. When others were undoubtedly mired in an emotional-spiritual misery in the 1930s, spurred by an economic depression, Chisholm was apparently feeling like someone who had escaped this. Judging by his poetry, Thomas related his former life before Christ was ‘buried’ and ‘dead’, and that he did not respond to Satan and the world’s entreaties (v.1). No ‘allure’ remained from the old (v.2), along with the accompanying ‘cruel dominion’ (v.4) of sin. Instead, Thomas asserted that he was ‘living anew’ (refrain), ‘alive through the Spirit’ (v.3), leaving behind ‘gloom of the grave’ (v.3). A ‘new’, ‘free’, and ‘rejoicing’ attitude (refrain, vv. 3-4) was his, with the opposite in the rearview mirror. With over a thousand poems attributed to Chisholm over his lifetime, including hundreds set to music, we could say that his ‘new’ life was in fact a decades-long behavior pattern that was part of the character of this 69-year-old.
Forty-plus years of belief and practice was something Thomas wanted to recommend, not only because it was a release from spiritual prison, but more so because of the joys it brought. All these delights were captured in the wonders of being in touch with the ‘Glorious Life of Christ’ (v.4), and not just contacting them for a moment, but ‘shar(ing)’ in them (v.4). That’s decades of ebullience speaking to you and me, through the pen of Thomas Chisholm. His ‘new creature’ posture, though he might have been bent over physically as an old man, must have stood out to others who knew him. Perhaps the physical breakdowns he surely was feeling helped bring into sharper relief the new body that awaited him. I sure am looking forward to some of my parts being new someday, as I become more and more aware of chronic aches and manage my own feelings about mortality. How about you, as we begin 2021?
See here for some biographic information on the author: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/c/h/i/s/chisholm_to.htm
Also see here: https://hymnary.org/person/Chisholm_Thomas
Also, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chisholm_(songwriter)
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