Was this the only question he ever asked in song? It was the mid-1930s (perhaps about 1935), and Tillit Sydney Teddlie would live to double his age beyond that point in his life; yet, most likely he did not know he’d have so many more years to coax, encourage, and warn people about the eternal future with the words “What Will Your Answer Be?” He was a lifelong Texan, spending a large amount of his effort in Hunt County (northeastern Texas), though he got around to many of the surrounding counties during his 102 years on earth. Perhaps it was all the people to whom he’d preached or with whom he’d sung songs, up to his life’s midpoint, that prompted his question. And, there would be more than one question on his lips – in fact, a whole series of them. He evidently did not want to leave unchallenged the inertia he must have seen in so many people that he’d encountered. He’d already said what was on his heart so many times, probably to some of the same people yet again, but this time he approached them in a different way.
Tillit Teddlie wrote over 100 songs in his life, but this one in the mid-1930s may have been the only one with a question mark in it so prominently. He must have prodded and otherwise tried to convict and convince many wavering souls in the 85 years after he gave himself to God as a teenager. These episodes including singing school classes, sermon deliveries, and publication of 14 songbooks, all of which aimed to spread the Christian faith and the fellowship of believers. Among all that fellowship, including on his 100th birthday celebration at a church in Dallas, it must have stung Tillit’s heart to ponder that perhaps some of those present, who hadn’t yet submitted to God, would be missing from the eternal fellowship. That’s the kind of moment one can imagine troubled Tillit the most, spawning the direct question he used to try to pierce the hard shell of each lost and indifferent person whom he met. No more beating around the bush, he might have said. ‘Where will you spend eternity?’ (chorus) Facing the divine judge is not a shrug-your-shoulders kind of moment, Tillit thought, and so he began his musical plea by setting that scene, and asking the question that was the song’s title. It’s a very personal self-examination that Tillit urges. If you don’t line yourself up for heaven, ‘What will (your) sentence be?’ (v.2), he asks bluntly. ‘…O, what will it be?’, he cries fervently in the last few words of this appeal. Tillit was after hearts, and if he had to break them to penetrate with the truth, that’s what might save some who were otherwise condemned. Make the God-Son your answer, this writer says (v.3), for the choice is yours. ‘Now is the time…’ (v.3), and you can sense that he’s trying to nudge the uncommitted gently, yet persistently.
How reasonable is it to love people, and not tell them what they need to know? Could that have been another question, perhaps between Tillit and himself, that helped compel his poetry here? With 100 years in the rearview mirror, how did Tillit feel about his life’s work and the countless numbers whom he had touched? In his innermost thoughts, Tillit might have admitted that there were some people whom he wished weren’t still on the outside looking in. But, none of us accomplishes all that we want to do, and that’s just part of the human experience. You’re never going to get it all right, nor be able to successfully field all of life’s questions. Tillit would have instead recommended that you and I need to ask and answer some questions with one overriding priority in mind. What is your highest priority today?
See brief biography of the author here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/t/e/d/teddlie_ts.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillit_Sidney_Teddlie
https://hymnary.org/person/Teddlie_Tillit
See biography on composer also in Our Garden of Song, edited by Gene C. Finley, Howard Publishing Company, West Monroe, Louisiana, 1980.
No comments:
Post a Comment