Precious Lord, Take My Hand

Today, the New Hope Baptist Church in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma where Rev. E. J. Tyson serves as Pastor will be observing the Home going Services for their chairman of the Deacon Board, Deacon Samuel L. Richardson, who is also my best friend's father. I am saddened that my schedule will not allow me to be there with the family but grateful that God allowed me to be with them the night God called him home. As only a good deacon can, the moment the hospital released Pastor Tyson and sent him home, God released Deacon Richardson and sent him to his eternal home. He was 92 years old and didn't look a day over 70.

Time and space won't allow me to be with New Hope so I send this devotional. Out of a broken heart after his wife and newly born son had both died, Thomas Dorsey cried to his Lord to lead him "through the storm, through the night" In doing so, he created lines that have since ministered to others in an unusual way. This tender song, written by Thomas A, Dorsey in 1932, has since been a favorite with Christians everywhere.

As he began to be successful as a composer of jazz and blues songs, however, he drifted away from God. After it seemed to him that he was miraculously spared in brushes with death, Dorsey came back to the Lord. As his life dramatically changed he began to write gospel songs and to sing in church services. It was during a revival meeting in St. Louis, Missouri, that he received a telegram telling the tragic news of his wife and infant son. Stunned and grief-stricken, Dorsey cried, "God, you aren’t worth a dime to me right now!"


A few weeks later, however, as Dorsey fingered the keyboard of a piano, he created the lines of "Precious Lord" to fit a tune that was familiar to him. The following Sunday the choir of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in South Chicago, Illinois, sang the new song with Dorsey playing the accompaniment.

Precious Lord, take my hand, lead me on, help me stand—I am tired, I am weak, I am worn; thro’ the storm, thro’ the night, lead me on to the light—Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.

When my way grows drear, Precious Lord, linger near—when my life is almost gone. Hear my cry, hear my call, hold my hand lest I fall—Take my hand, precious Lord, lead me home.