Who at the Door is Standing? -- Mary Bridges Canedy Slade

 

Was she still resisting in some way? Or, maybe she was just a careful listener, and very conscientious regarding what was good versus not so good for her emotional and spiritual health. On the other hand, had Mary Bridges Canedy Slade and her minister-husband just installed a new door at their home (as this blogger did a few years ago, see picture), prompting either of them to ask “Who at the Door is Standing?” on occasion? Probably not the latter – ‘Who’s there?’, we might say when a bell rings or someone knocks - for Mary asks the question as a metaphor. She might have been admitting that she needed to open up and practice a little more submission to her Master’s leading, as someone might do to allow another to enter following a polite request. But, being the spouse of a minister, perhaps she was also providing him an analogy for one of his sermons. After all, who among us hasn’t answered the door, or at least heard the knocking, at least once before?   

 

Mary Slade wrote just a handful of poem-songs, but several have survived and still are part of hymnals today, nearly 150 years after this 50-ish minister’s wife wrote/published this one about a door knocker (in 1876). The Slades were Fall River, Massachusetts residents, where Mary was also a teacher and an editor or publisher of two journals (the New England Journal of Education and Wide Awake) at one time or another. So, her motives for writing could have been various ones, including sermon illustrations for her husband, as well as pieces for discussion in her own classrooms or as articles for the journals she helped promote. Perhaps she used all of these methods to coax her readers to respond to the message from a patient God. From the picture Mary draws of this God, He’s rather unimposing, not hostile. Indeed, ‘patient(ly)’ (v.1) is how she describes Him, with ‘sweet(ly)’-sounding words (refrain) that He uses to ask gently for the hearers’ attention. It’s said that Mary was ‘warm-hearted’, so her depiction of God here was a character sketch that she apparently adopted for herself towards others. She must have thought the message would best communicate if it was personal, too. In the original poem, she says ‘my door’, versus ‘the door’ that is in hymnals today, and each of her verses express a one-to-one relationship between the hearer and the knocker. The hearer’s answer is not immediately positive, as Mary saw ‘lonely’ people and God, too (v.2), who are without each other, though He keeps asking for entrance (v.3). Mary might have been a warm-hearted minister’s wife, but she recognized reality. Some people need lots of time before they will agree that they need Him. Mary’s 4^th verse indicates she saw the reluctant hearer finally responding to Him, with a‘hasten’(ing) and ‘open wide’ attitude. We could conclude that Mary was an optimist, right?

 

Perhaps Mary’s own experience was that He's patient, with a gentle knocking, though it is persistent. If someone kept up that knocking or doorbell-ringing for long at my house, I’d undoubtedly think that person is rude. But, consider this -- at least they don’t try to break down the door! And, will that door-knocker eventually give up, and go away? Will the person inside the house become deaf, or hard-hearted, so that they are immune to the persuader? Mary kept editing the Wide Awake journal until her end, just six years after ‘Who at the Door...’ was published, according to one source. She apparently did not give up easily. Neither does God.     

 

See here for all the song’s verses and the refrain: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/w/h/o/a/whoatmyd.htm

 

Very brief biography on the author: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/s/l/a/d/slade_mbc.htm

 

A few more details of author here: http://www.ccel.org/ccel/nutter/hymnwriters.Slade_NB.html