His Yoke Is Easy -- Daniel S. Warner

 

This ‘Floating Bethel’ (shown here) was a barge on the Ohio River that was apparently what a certain evangelist had ridden in his travels, perhaps even during the time in which he wrote some poetry in 1893. Daniel Sydney Warner (more often called D.S. Warner) told those who would listen that “His Yoke Is Easy”, a message he must have related countless times in his trips to preach and convert people to Christ. This poem was one that he penned near the end of his life, after decades of sermons. So what was D.S wanting to communicate, and what spurred him to write the words? Let’s see what we do know, and what we might have to leave for later.

 

The short answer about D.S. Warner’s “His Yoke Is Easy” is that we don’t really know what or if a specific episode stimulated his creation. Nevertheless, he travelled widely, and must have needed plenty of compelling resources to help convey his messages, so perhaps ‘His Yoke…’ was created in that spirit. Much of his experience as an evangelist was in the Ohio River valley, including the episode on the Ohio River barge in the year following his 1893 penmanship of the song. He also travelled as far as California and to several states in the Midwest and South, and to Ontario, Canada. At 51 years old, when he wrote the poem that would subsequently be put to music (by Barney E. Warren), Warner had undoubtedly encountered so many people who needed God, but needed coaxing. A song might help advance Warner’s point; could that have been the impetus for the scores of song poems that he crafted, that they would be readily available tools in his journeys? If so, ‘His Yoke…’ is written as if it’s a personal endorsement of God by the author, an appeal from himself to an audience listening to his pitch. ’I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, and ‘mine’ are the personal pronouns that D.S. employs 16 times in his verses and three more times in his refrain to emphasize the intimate nature of his experience with the One he came to recommend. If we can surmise from his poetry what kind of preaching message he usually delivered, we might conclude that Warner didn’t use the hellfire and brimstone approach, as other evangelists might have. Instead, D.S. persuaded his hearers with God’s love (vv. 1-2), His rescue of the sinner (vv. 3 and 5), and his own response of devotion to this God. These are messages that still work today. Everyone wants a loving God, and we’re all mistake-makers.

 

D.S. Warner also realized that God’s opponent (Satan) is often near, trying to steer me away from the Savior (v. 4). Don’t be fooled, Warner admonished. It was a warning that he needed to heed himself two years later, when death came knocking and took him in Michigan, probably before he expected to go. The same year that Warner wrote ‘His Yoke…’, he co-authored with his musical collaborator, Barney Warren, a collection called Echoes of Glory. One might guess that ‘His Yoke…’ is among the Echoes collection. Someday, when we all arrive home, we might think of all the songs we’ve sung here as echoes. But, they won’t be faint ones. They’re strong foretastes now, pulling me like magnets toward the destination I should choose. The other way is the one our adversary has waiting for the unfortunate fool. D.S. might have said it many times as an evangelist: Listen to the message He’s singing to your heart.     

 

See this link for information about the author: https://hymnary.org/person/Warner_Daniel

See extensive biographic on author here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Sidney_Warner

Also see this link for author’s very brief biography: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/w/a/r/n/warner_ds.htm

Father God, Just For Today -- Marc Schelske

 

This young college student needed some time alone, and he got it. Or, maybe more accurately, somebody got him. You see, Marc Schelske had no idea the moment was coming when he uttered the words “Father God, Just for Today” and a song appeared, seemingly out of nowhere in a dark room in southwestern Idaho (see map-picture here) in the mid-1990s. Marc may feel like a vessel that was used to verbalize and ‘musical-ize’ the words and chords that he sang in just a few moments, and which have stuck around and impacted so many people unpredictably. The One to whom Marc was talking had something to produce that day, and Marc might say he was merely the receptacle, a guy who was willing to pour out for others what had entered into his being during that episode.  

 

Marc Schelske was probably in his 20s in 1994-1995 when the unexpected ‘…Just for Today’ prayer emerged during a dark-stage moment in his busy young life. Marc says he was plenty involved in his college studies and youth ministry one week while visiting a Boise, Idaho-area school as the guest speaker and worship leader. So, perhaps that was one reason he needed a moment just to himself. The dark stage in the school’s auditorium, where a grand piano that he had an urge to play was also located, provided what he needed. Soon, Marc stealthily found himself experimenting on this amazing instrument, and the words and music of the song just jumped out, an experience that he frankly says he hasn’t been able to repeat. But, he also mentions that the words reflect how he wants his prayers to be every day. ‘Just guide me today’, is how Marc might sum up what he was saying. That week’s students heard Marc’s invention, but he says he never expected it to have traveled so far for so long, two or three decades after he first spoke the words. He also taught this small song in a few other venues, but he’d be the first to admit that it certainly was not very complicated. Perhaps that is the source of the song’s appeal. When a person feels overloaded, and just at a loss for words, the simple, unadorned phrases of ‘Father God, Just for Today’ are the only medicine one needs.  

 

Marc certainly knew that God is infinite, and capable of so much more than anyone can fathom, right? Perhaps the connection between a human life and a divine God is rather like a structure that requires electricity to function, but not too much voltage all at once that could overload the circuits. That’s me, this limited structure that needs a link to power that I cannot acquire on my own, even if it’s just a microscopic amount. The Spirit need not explain to me how He does things; I cannot understand the whys and wherefores anyway. I just need one thing when I talk to Him, the same thing that Marc had when he approached Him on a dark stage sitting at a piano: Trust. Trust Him. Where else will you and I find what Marc found, a resource who can send a simple little song to faraway places, and listen to me in my space every day?   

       

 

Source for the song story is here: https://marcalanschelske.com/just-for-today-again/

Without Him -- Mylon R. LeFevre

 

Something about his stint in the army as a 17-year-old spurred what he would write and put to music, a 20-minute episode that would be perhaps the most consequential event in his life, as events played out over the next several decades. Mylon R. LeFevre said in 1962 that “Without Him” (Jesus), his life would be negative in so many ways, but did he really know just how adverse his situation would become? As he reflected on his own words so many years later, he could sing them with heartfelt passion, looking in the rearview mirror at what had been his roller-coaster lifestyle. What had spawned the words he wrote at an army base (in Columbia, South Carolina, in the county of Richland, shown here) as a teenager? Let’s take a look.

 

Mylon Lefevre grew up among a family of gospel singers, a circumstance that undoubtedly planted the musical seed in his life from an early age and fertilized the soil that would bring forth ‘Without Him’. Mylon not only began singing and playing guitar as a child, but also moved around repeatedly during his school-age years, probably a product of his family’s music-industry-driven lifestyle. Consequently, Mylon’s experience in multiple schools – an average of a different one every year – was generally poor, including some time in a reform school. His aptitude for songwriting, conversely, did not suffer, though the song-poems he would write tended to make him a target for ridicule by his peers. Later, at age 17, Mylon had just recently joined the army, and was at Fort Jackson in South Carolina. His parents were far away, including on one occasion in Memphis, Tennessee, some 500 miles distant. Yet, that apparently had not stopped him from sharing with them a song that he’d written, one that evidently swelled their pride in their son’s burgeoning ability. ‘Without Him’ was in their gospel-singing tradition, so it more than passed the LeFevre family ‘sniff’ test. Mylon’s own remembrance of the song as a 20-minute gestation period, along with the words he penned, suggest this teenager was feeling a need for God during a rough few moments. Was it a tough day at Fort Jackson, where he was making less that $100 a month? ‘Without Him’, Mylon said he’d found ‘nothing’, ‘fail(ure)’, and ‘drifting’(v.1); and felt he was ‘dying’, feeling ‘enslaved’ and ‘worthless’ (v.2), if not for the Jesus he knew. Within a short time, Mylon was singing his inspiration before a gospel convention audience in Memphis, among them the sensation Elvis Presley, who would be the first among a hundred music artists to record Mylon’s creation. This instant fame and fortune set Mylon on an up-and-down path through the 1970s, a life that would include drug addiction and a consequent physical punishment that he had brought on himself. By 1980, Mylon had come to his senses, partly as a result of his own father’s renewed devotion to God some years earlier. Mylon departed from the rock-and-roll scene that he had entered as a result of his success, as part of his own turn back toward God, and formed a new band named ‘Broken Heart’ by 1982, a testimony to the genuine change he’d made. This change also demonstrated that he’d circled back to what he’d written as a 17-year-old – a guy who authentically related to what it was like to once be lost ‘without him’.                

 

It was not unexpected that Mylon would sing ‘Without Him’ the night he was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame in 2007. It was like telling one’s biography, Mylon might have said, for he indeed had found out what it was like to be lost, and then to rediscover Jesus and all He brings to one’s life. Mylon could say what it felt like to be at a dead-end on more than one occasion. A dead-end spiritually, as well as physically – you can read all about it in his own words (see the tributetomylon link below). See if what he says sounds familiar…and then take the medicine that Mylon LeFevre finally decided to ingest, so many years after writing this prescription for himself.

 

 

      

  

See brief information on the song and the author in this source: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.  

See the author-composer’s complete biography here, and the song’s story: http://www.tributetomylon.com/biography.htm

Read about the author-composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mylon_LeFevre

See very brief author information and his picture here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/l/e/f/lefevre_mr.htm