The Hymn That Was Born in Ordinary Mornings

In 1923, a former Methodist minister named Thomas Chisholm sat down and wrote a hymn — not in response to a dramatic rescue at sea or a miraculous healing, but out of something quieter. Chisholm had spent years battling chronic illness that forced him out of pastoral ministry. He sold life insurance to get by. His health came and went like weather.

Yet when he wrote Great Is Thy Faithfulness, he insisted no single event inspired it. "There is no dramatic story behind it," he said. The hymn grew from years of waking up sick, opening his Bible, and finding that the mercies of the Almighty were still there — stubborn, steady, new every morning, just as Lamentations 3:22-23 promised.

That is a kind of healing we rarely talk about. We pray for the miracle — the tumor that vanishes, the diagnosis reversed. And God does those things. But sometimes healing looks like Chisholm's life: not a cure, but a quiet daily sustaining. A faithfulness that doesn't remove the struggle but refuses to let it have the final word.

The word faithfulness in that hymn isn't about our grip on God. It's about His grip on us — morning after difficult morning, season after difficult season.

If you are waiting for healing today, take heart. El Shaddai, the God who is more than enough, may be doing something even now — not removing the thorn, but proving His mercies are new every single morning.