I Am a Stranger Here – Elijah Taylor Cassel

 

He was a small-town doctor in the middle of America, and while tending to the health of many of the residents of Hastings, Nebraska, this fellow must have cared about more than the physical bodies he touched. Elijah Taylor Cassel had been practicing medicine for decades, but as his life continued from the 19^th into the 20^th Century, he practiced another pursuit that outlived his role as a doctor. Maybe he’d felt for some time that his poetic words “I Am a Stranger Here” (aka “The King’s Business”) were about exchanging the physician’s coat for another, something that he eventually did as he entered his later years. To the common folk, Elijah’s words that he was a foreigner in a place where he was well-known must have seemed a bit peculiar. Was he lost, or beginning to lose his mind? He eventually did leave Nebraska, making a couple of other stops along the way before going somewhere else for good.

 

Elijah Taylor Cassel had spent practically all of his adult life in Hastings, Nebraska as a doctor, yet he began the poem, which his wife (Flora) put to music, by saying he was a stranger in 1902. How could a 53-year-old long-time resident, most likely one of relatively few doctors in this small community, say that? That he was also a hymnwriter, with the collaboration of his wife, was probably not a surprise to those patients that the Cassels got to know well, however. He authored a few dozen poems that his wife helped turn into hymns, so his faith expression was certainly not a secret, and we can imagine it could have mingled at times with his professional life. Was Elijah unfulfilled in his medical role, leading him to say throughout his song’s three verses that his ‘business’ was in fact ‘my King’s’? Though he was a physician, he called himself an ‘ambassador’ from another plane of existence (v.1). By 1910, Elijah had formally entered church ministry in Denver, Colorado and stayed there and in nearby Fort Morgan for the next 11 years. That he entered ministry so late in life – after he turned 60 years old – says something about this doctor-hymnwriter who decided to become a fulltime minister at a time when most people would have retired. He wasn’t just composing rhyming words many years before, but rather expressing feelings that resonated from deep within himself. He wanted to keep doing the ‘king’s business’, in an even more intensive way than he had been doing. How many of us can say that an internal fire stayed hot or grew hotter after one’s 60^th birthday?   

 

What was it, particularly, that compelled Elijah Cassel late in his life to pursue formal ministry? We can only speculate that he finally took a step that he’d been considering. Was it a lifetime of watching patients deal with sicknesses that coaxed Elijah that the human body needed a more permanent solution to mortality? Dr. Cassel had come a long way himself, and seen a lot by the time he changed jobs. Born in Indiana, educated in Illinois, practiced medicine in Nebraska, ministered in Colorado, Elijah spent his last years in California before going on to his reward. Five states in one lifetime may have told this doctor that nothing is forever, at least on planet Earth. He must have prescribed many remedies after conducting countless examinations and running tests on ailing people. Do you think it occurred to him more than once that another physician was so much wiser and more skillful than he was? That physician-King was the one Elijah was really recommending to his patients all along.

 

 

 

See here for short biography on the author: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/c/a/s/s/cassel_et.htm

 

See here for all three verses and the refrain of the song: https://hymnary.org/text/i_am_a_stranger_here_within_a_foreign_la

 

See here for obituary on the author: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/82071031/elijah-taylor-cassel

I Am the Vine -- Knowles Shaw

 

He was deep inside a monologue that had captured his attention, perhaps one that he intended to use to address a crowd. That much we could say about Knowles Shaw. He took seriously the words “I Am the Vine” that his God had spoken, and must have thought that his own were unworthy to accompany those of Deity, though he most likely had sung these words, perhaps even before he preached them to others. Knowles knew what stirred a crowd to belief and commitment, since he had been instrumental in thousands of conversions in his travels. And so, the methods he chose were well-considered. He must have felt a certain peace and confidence in his life’s purpose, something that he reportedly voiced in his last words, on an occasion when others in that position might have cried out in agony. Not Knowles Shaw.

 

He was first a musician, but then a preacher who merged this gift with a passion to tell others about the One who came to earth as the God-Man. Though Knowles Shaw lived only into his 44^th year and died in a tragic train accident (on June 7, 1878), his time was well-spent, without a hint of self-regret when he departed from mortal life. He’d already spent countless hours, probably travelled thousands and miles, and spoken to a like number of people by the time he authored “I Am the Vine”, borrowing the very words of the One he served. That all of the verses and the refrain that Knowles wrote were words or paraphrases of what Jesus said to his closest disciples in His last days before his execution underscore how deeply committed this author was to presenting the Christ as an unvarnished person to those who would listen. Knowles didn’t need to add anything to what Jesus said, he must have concluded. Just repeat to listeners what He told others when His most troubled hours approached. Put to music, Knowles may have personally felt what Jesus had said was even more memorable. Otherwise, why would he have paired the words with music? Since he was an evangelist, one can imagine that this song was preceded with a stirring message from the biblical text (John 15), as Knowles tried to capture the hearts of listeners and spur their devotion toward God. Though we know not the detailed circumstances of its incubation and emergence, we can imagine that ‘I Am…’ must have been used many times to great effect, perhaps with Knowles actually guiding the singing of what he had crafted. Knowles was reportedly a gifted speaker, able to readily connect with an audience when delivering a message, and then further captivate them with his singing voice. Knowles may have concluded, as he too read Jesus’ gentle but firm words about allegiance to Him, that this God’s special moments with friends as He prepared to leave them would impact hearers, even centuries later. Perhaps in Knowles’ King James bible (most likely the version he would have used in the mid-to-late 19^th Century), these were red-letter words, as they still are in many bibles today.     

 

Knowles Shaw, according to one account, in his last words on earth exclaimed how great was his honor to bring people to the feet of Christ. What he wrote in ‘I Am…’ showed that he had internalized what he was here to do long before he was at the moment of death. ‘Put God’s words out there in front – that’s my banner’, might have been Shaw’s life motto, if what he did with this song is indicative of his life. He was indeed prepared to receive his eternal inheritance, to be with God. That’s the kind of resolution that can stem the tide of anguish, even when one is lying in a train wreck with life slipping away. His words are all that really matter. He used them to create everything (Genesis 1), and He will use them at the end (Revelation 22). Are you ready to hear Him?  

 

See an account of the author’s untimely death here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/h/a/w/shaw_k.htm

 

See a very short biography of the author here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowles_Shaw

 

See more here: https://hymnary.org/text/i_am_the_vine_and_ye_are_the_branches

 

People Need the Lord -- Phill McHugh and Greg Nelson

 

It happened in a very musical city -- Nashville, Tennessee; so, you have to wonder whether the venue where these two songwriters had an epiphany had a history with lyrics scrawled on napkins, or maybe conversations that moved from tables to exit doors and back to studios, as happened one day in the early 1980s. Phill McHugh and Greg Nelson had tried all morning, but they seemed to be pushing all the wrong buttons as they sat in Greg’s office trying to produce some new music. Was it only hunger that drove them to a local restaurant, a needed sustenance break to feed their physical selves? Phill and Greg found other hunger at the eatery they chose that day, but it wasn’t their own. It was a perception they could have picked up in probably almost any public gathering, but perhaps it was the fusion of something they were trying to find and their own otherwise ordinary purpose for going to this place that sparked what happened next.

 

She could have probably been almost any waitress, who served Phill and Greg that day in a restaurant where they went after a fruitless morning of song creation. The Nashville restaurant is also not named, but it would not be surprising if both the server and the location were actually familiar, at least in a distant kind of way. The two men both remembered seeing her face, and thinking that even with a smiling expression, this woman had a vacant look in her eyes. That’s when they spontaneously thought ‘she needs the Lord’, a not uncommon impression they gathered when observing the other lunchtime guests in the place. Was it just a bad day, when everyone was a bit overwhelmed by their schedules and tasks – maybe just a feeling of tedium that often pervades urban life? Phill and Greg imply that they recognized this place and these people, maybe not by names and details of their lives, but that this emptiness was sadly very normal for millions of people around the world. It was impossible for the two songwriters to actually look into all those countless faces, as they sat in one restaurant, but what they saw in that place in the space of one hour convinced them that a solution, a divine one, would resonate for people all over the globe. ‘Every day…filled with care…private pain’ (v.1) were the insights that Phill and Greg could see permeating these people, even if they never had had a conversation with them. Perhaps the two men had often felt as these restaurant workers’ and its customers’ faces suggested that day – that life lacked something, and furthermore, that the ‘… world where wrong seems right’ (v.2) was in control of events.  How do people escape a situation that seems to violate standards of right and wrong? It’s a ‘lost’ world, McHugh and Nelson concluded, but that’s not the end of the matter. Meet God, and He will be to all of these distressed people an ‘open door’ (song’s refrain) to a new reality, one where He redeems all of us and life itself.     

 

Phill McHugh and Greg Nelson were actually thinking of themselves a bit as they sat in that Nashville restaurant, too. After all, they went there to be served food. They were hungry. The morning’s efforts must have left them feeling somewhat frustrated, so perhaps the change of scenery was one thing they sought in order to approach their objective – song-making – from a new angle. As they looked about themselves at the other people, they arrived at kind of a self-judgement in the last line of their new song: ‘When will we realize…’, and joined that thought with the song’s title words. Greg and Phill were admitting their own responsibility – and, yours and mine too – in helping a lost civilization find its way back to the Creator. I’m made in His image. And, so are you. Walk toward Him and toward those who know Him best, and see if things don’t look brighter.  

 

 

The song story is found in the following books: I Could Sing of Your Love Forever, by Lindsay Terry, Thomas Nelson publishers, 2008; Stories Behind Popular Songs and Hymns, by Lindsay Terry, Baker Book House Company, 1992; and The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.