The Hymn That Was Never Healed Into

In 1923, Thomas Chisholm sat down and wrote what would become one of the most beloved hymns in Christian history — Great Is Thy Faithfulness. What most congregations never realize is who wrote it and why.

Chisholm was a Methodist minister who had to leave pastoral work after just one year. His body simply would not cooperate. Chronic illness plagued him for decades, leaving him frequently bedridden and unable to hold steady employment. He never received the dramatic healing he must have prayed for countless times.

Yet from that sickbed, he penned words drawn from Lamentations 3:22-23: "Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father. Morning by morning new mercies I see." He later told friends that nothing remarkable had prompted the hymn — no sudden recovery, no miraculous intervention. It came, he said, from simply watching God show up faithfully in ordinary days. Day after day. Morning after morning.

Here is what Chisholm understood that we so often miss: healing does not always look like the absence of suffering. Sometimes the deepest healing the Almighty performs is giving us a soul that can sing while the body still aches. Jehovah Rapha — the God Who Heals — sometimes heals our despair before He heals our diagnosis.

If you are waiting for God to remove your burden, do not miss what He may already be doing — making you whole from the inside out.