Starting Right
Starting Right is a 5 minute Day Starter to help keep you motivated, encouraged, and focused throughout your day. DannyMac is a pastor, teacher, motivational speaker, husband, and father. His years of leading and training people have given him vast experience in helping individuals to accomplish change in their lives and meet their goals. He can help you set the course for your day by offering practical advice from God's Word in a positive and fun way. There is no better way to begin your day than by Starting Right with DannyMac.
Starting Right
Faith Through Music
Start your Monday with a musical journey through time as we explore the powerful hymn "Nearer My God to Thee." Written in 1841 by Sarah Adams, this enduring piece of sacred music carries a fascinating history that spans centuries.
Today's episode features a moving instrumental rendition by Andre Rieu's orchestra that captures the hymn's emotional depth. Listen to the full performance using the link in our show notes and experience why this centuries-old composition continues to touch hearts today.
Here is the youtube link to Nearer My God to Thee.
https://youtu.be/z56-fM1WYnc
Good morning and welcome to Starting Right with Danny Mac. I'm going to be here every Monday to Friday to help you get a great five-minute start to your day. So grab your cup of coffee, sit back, relax and let me help you start your day right. Good morning everyone, welcome to Monday. I'm back with you again today and my voice is also back again today. Those of you who were listening on Friday you know I was kind of growly, but my voice is feeling much better.
Speaker 1:So we're going to do what we always do on Mondays we're going to talk about some Christian music. Often it's some of the more current songs that we are hearing on the radio and singing in church, but every once in a while we go back and listen to some of the great songs and hymns from our church history. There are many of them that are very powerful and still speak to us today, even when they are several hundred years old. And today we're going to look at one of those older songs. It is Near my God to Thee by Sarah Adams, who wrote the song in 1841. Sarah Adams, who wrote the song in 1841. Now, sarah was a very talented young woman. Born in 1805, she grew up with a great interest in performing. She loved theater and in 1834, she appeared on the London stage as Lady Macbeth. The people loved her. Her reviews were fabulous, but her health was not so good and so she had to withdraw from her stage performances. But she still was very talented, so she spent a lot of her time writing hymns, and most of those hymns were songs of praise. She began attending London's South Place Unitarian Church and in 1841 the pastor, a Reverend William Fox, visited her because he wanted to include some of her hymns in a new hymnal that he was putting together. He also mentioned he was having a difficult time finding a hymn to accompany his message. The following Sunday he wanted to tell the story of Jacob at Bethel found in Genesis 28, verses 20-22. Sarah offered to write a hymn for him based on those verses. For the rest of the week she studied that passage very, very carefully, visualizing Jacob with his head on the stone, sleeping at night and dreaming about the ladder that reached up to heaven. By the time Sunday came along, she had written the wonderful hymn Nearer my God to Thee. Sarah died of consumption August 14, 1848, at the age of 43.
Speaker 1:With this hymn being around as long as it has. History has attached some great stories to it. Some of it has been proven and some of it is still uncertain. One of the greatest uncertain facts about this hymn was that Near my God to Thee was the last hymn played by the orchestra when the Titanic sank in 1912. It's been difficult to confirm whether this is actually true or not, but it is known that the ship's bandleader, a man by the name of Wallace Hartley, very much liked this hymn and he wanted it to be played at his funeral. Some accompanying evidence was given by a Canadian survivor of the sinking of Tolda being comforted as she was on the lifeboat as they watched the ship tip up and then slip beneath the waters. There is another interesting story that we know is true.
Speaker 1:This comes from Ted Turner, who founded CNN in 1980. At that time, he made this promise. He said we won't be signing off until the world ends, we'll be covering it live and then, when the end of the world comes, we'll play Nearer my God to Thee before we sign off. Turner had commissioned a video recording of this hymn for that purpose, played by a military marching band. It is reported that he showed this video to several reporters over the years and then in 2015, the video tagged in CNN's database as Hold for Release Till the End of the World is Confirmed was leaked to the internet.
Speaker 1:While this song has had some unique history associated with it, it is the power of its music and its message combined together that have made this hymn such a favorite for so long. The five simple stanzas declare God's love for us and our relationship with Him that during our time on earth, as we commit our lives to Him, we are drawn closer and closer to Him in this life and then, ultimately, when we leave this world through death, we go to be with Him, to be near my God to Thee. I was unable to find many modern recordings of this hymn, although I really wanted to do it today, but I found a very beautiful instrumental version of it from Andre Rieu, and I'll give you just a short clip of that now, and then there will be in your show notes the link where you can go and watch and listen to the entire performance by Andre Rieu and his orchestra. It's beautiful and it is very, very moving. I hope you enjoy it. Have a great day, my friends. Here's Andre Rieu and Nearer my God to Thee © transcript Emily Beynon.
