Author: Helen H Lemmel (1922)
Birth: November 14, 1863
Death: November 1, 1961
Hymn Story:
Helen Lemmel (1863-1961), a gifted singer, was born in England to a Methodist minister and his wife. Her family emigrated to the United States when she was 12 years old. Her parents recognized her musical gifts, and made it possible for her to study with good teachers. Over time she became a well-known vocalist, giving concerts around the midwest in the early 1900s, teaching voice at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and eventually moving to Seattle where she served for some time as a music critic for a local newspaper, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
She was inspired to write “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus” in 1918 after reading a missionary tract from Lilias Trotter, a missionary to Algeria. Trotter was writing about the difficulty of maintaining focus while living in a world that provides us with so many choices. She gave this prescription for keeping one’s life moving in the right direction:
Turn your soul’s vision to Jesus, and look and look at Him,
and a strange dimness will come over all that is apart from Him.
Helen titled the hymn “The Heavenly Vision” but it is best known by the first line of the refrain, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus”.
Lemmel wrote more than 500 hymns, as well as a book for children, Story of the Bible. But “Turn Your Eyes upon Jesus” is the one that has continued to find its way into modern hymnals—and into human hearts. As is true of so many popular hymns, it holds out a promise of Jesus’ help for troubled souls.
You can listen to the hymn here:
Sources:
*https://www.hymnsillustrated.com/turn-your-eyes-upon-Jesus
*https://castlefieldschurch.org.uk/turn-your-eyes-upon-jesus-the-story-behind-the-hymn/
*https://sermonwriter.com/hymn-stories/turn-eyes-upon-jesus/
*https://hymnary.org/text/o_soul_are_you_weary_and_troubled
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