Did she really like work this much?! Most people think of work in a negative way…I have to go to work. But, perhaps Annie Louisa Walker (later Coghill) was really just taking a cue from what she’d read God-in-the-flesh once say about his daily activities. ‘Do what I made you to be’, she might have surmised, or as she paraphrased what He said, “Work, for the Night Is Coming”. She didn’t feel that saying it only once or a few times was sufficient, but was it a conscious choice to say ‘work’ the same number of times as her age? Some circumstances in England, or as likely in southern Quebec (in Canada – see map) where her family had recently arrived, coaxed three poetic verses from this teenager’s pen. The poem’s theme evidently stuck with Annie, as the subsequent years in her new home and then later after she returned to England showed.
Annie Walker’s location when she wrote about work is suggested in the publication where her poem-hymn first appeared, and the title she chose further indicates at least one activity in which she was engaged when she picked up her pen. Leaves from the Backwoods that was published in Montreal, Canada in 1862 contained the poem she first crafted with the words ‘The Night Cometh’. It was evidently something she created as an 18-year-old in 1854, shortly after her family arrived in Pointe-Lévy, Québec from England (in 1853). The area was still developing in the mid-19th Century, with Annie’s father working for the regional railroad that connected the American northeast with southeastern Canada. Perhaps Annie thought of the area as ‘backwoods’, compared to the old-world England where she’d been born and raised up until her mid-teens. But, it didn’t seem to bother her, this girl who penned the word ‘work’ (or a synonym or form of the word ‘work’) 18 times in just three verses. Her phraseology indicates she was reading about an encounter Jesus had with a blind man whom He healed (John 9), when His followers asked Jesus to explain the root cause of the man’s disability. In short, Jesus did not affix blame. Instead, He looked at the situation as an opportunity to ‘work’, to reveal the power of God. Since He was in fact the God-man, could Jesus do any less than a God-work? And so, He also must have suspected that His work would cause no little consternation among the locals, especially the ‘religious’ authorities, since what He’d done happened on the Sabbath when any work was taboo.
We can guess that Annie was inspired by Jesus’ example, given her poem’s opening words and how many times she recommends being about one’s toil throughout ‘Work…Night Is Coming’. Was this a window onto her own life? Annie and two sisters would help organize and operate a school in Ontario, and then later she was a governess and book reviewer in England. Annie went on to author nine other publications, in addition to Leaves from the Backwoods. Annie had lots of abilities, and wasn’t shy about using the skills with which she’d been blessed. You and I might look at God and say, I cannot do as He could! True, but take a page from Annie Walker Coghill’s life example. Work can be a great thing, if it reflects the Great One who moves you.
See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990.
See the author’s biography here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/c/o/g/h/coghill_alw.htm
Also see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Louisa_Walker
See the song’s verses here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/w/o/r/k/workfort.htm
See here for information about the place from where the author wrote her song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9vis,_Quebec
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