Description
Speaker: Glenn Rawson
Hi, this is Glenn Rawson. One of the most powerful ways to share history and heritage is by the telling of stories. We began sharing inspiring stories nearly 30 years ago. Each of those stories is true and was intended to inspire and strengthen faith. Over the years, those stories have reached millions around the world. This podcast is for you to listen, learn and enjoy.
It is an uncomfortable and not welcome truth, that suffering seems to make us better saints. It is remarkable how we lose the desire to criticize and judge others when we’re struggling with our own repentance and weakness. Or how the pain we personally suffer, somehow deepens our sympathies for others suffering as well. This story is titled, Make Me A Poet.
First Story: Grace Noll 01:11
Grace Noll, was born in Inland Township, Iowa, October 31, 1877, somewhere in the middle of a family of seven children. Grace said, “A happier, healthier girl would have been hard to find.”
One of her earliest memories was of her first attempt when she was eight years old at writing poetry. Inspired by a lovely scene out on her father’s farm, she composed a simple little verse, and ran in the house to share it with their family. But they laughed at her. She later spoke of that moment, “…and so that laughter nipped a budding poet, and I never tried to write another line, until after I was married. I was a hurt child that day, hurt deeper than even I knew then. I never tried to write after that and to love and romance and a home came to me. And then she said, that quickened and awakened the desire to write poetry again.”
Well, in time, Grace met Norman Crowell, a writer himself, and because Grace loved words, as little girls love Barbie dolls, Grace was smitten with Norman. Was she serious when she later wrote, “I think Norman could have gone into bank robbing, if he only continued his writing, and I would have seen nothing wrong with him.”
She loved words. Well, Grace and Norman were married in 1901. Three years later, their first son was born. And Grace loved being a mother. She loved being a homemaker, “I loved my home and my housekeeping. I was proud of every new article of furniture that entered our door.”
And I don’t know what, Grace was critically injured. And from that point forward, right after the birth of her first son, her life became one long series of illnesses, and spending months in one hospital after another.
“It seemed to me at times, that all the suffering in the world had been heaped upon my poor back, and that I who so longed to run and play, to tramp the woods to laugh and sing and shout, would never be able to lift my body again from those hospital beds, to take my place as a normal woman in the natural walks of life.”
As Grace lay there on those long sleepless nights, she thought of Robert Louis Stevenson, the poet, and the asthma that threatened to suffocate him. She reflected on his struggle to survive and concluded,
“During all those days of suffering and illness, that truly great poet poured himself out in beautiful prose and poetry, which during all the years has been a source of comfort and joy to little children and two adults. Then she said, the thing that made Stevenson great, was his deep and undying sympathy, because he had suffered.”
Grace prays that some good might come of her suffering. And for the first time since the age of eight, she ventured to write a little poem called ‘A Prayer for Courage‘. She wrote it and sent it out. And it was published. Immediately, she said, “The letters began to come back to me from fellow sufferers.”
The response she received hardened Grace and gave her the courage and the vision, she said, “…to think that I, a nerve-racked pain ridden mother, who found caring for a little child a task almost too much for her daily strength, whose hours were being spent in a bed, or on a couch to do a thing like that was almost unthinkable. The thought kept coming to me. I would like to write poetry that will help others who are suffering as I am.”
She continued, “My English education had been almost negligible. I had never pictured myself as a serious writer. And yet, I found myself praying to God, to make me a poet, a real poet, one of the best and promising to honor Him in whatever I wrote, If only, she said, He gave me words to say.”
Her prayers were answered, and the poems came to the delight of a welcoming world. Over the decades that followed, Grace wrote more than 5000 poems published in 35 volumes. Grace became in her time, the most popular writer of verse in America. She at one point in the 1930s, was called ‘The Mother of the Year‘. At another point, she served and where was the Poet Laureate of Texas for three years. Dale Carnegie called her one of the most beloved poets in America.
So overwhelming was the response to Grace’s poetry, that her husband Norman quit his job, just to manage the correspondence. And all of this, from a bed of affliction. Grace yearned to go out and help people, but lacked the strength to even get up.
“Sorrow and suffering (she said)are universal experiences and it is out of suffering, that I have written just my own experiences, reactions and hopes, and they seem to have found a response in other hearts. I have tried to find the silver lining to every dark cloud, both for myself and for all who have suffered.”
It is profoundly significant therefore, that it was Grace Noll Crowlle, who wrote these words.
“Because I have been given much, I, too must give. Because of thy great bounty, Lord, each day I live, I shall divide my gifts from thee. With every brother that I see who has the help of, has the need of help from me.”
And on it goes, of that story and that woman. Have you ever missed someone that you love so deeply? That it palpably hurt, it aches? Perhaps that ache that you remember, is a measure of how much we should miss our Father in heaven, our heavenly parents. How much we should hunger and thirst to be with them again.
Second Story: Sarah Flowers 09:38
Sarah Flowers was born February 22, 1805, the second daughter of Benjamin and Eliza Gould Flowers and grew up in a devoutly religious home filled with bible reading and prayer. Yet Sarah’s father was a friend to all religions and very liberal in his views for the day. Sarah was influenced by a father, who was once sent to prison in defense of his right to free expression. He published a radical newspaper, and she was the daughter of a mother, who once lost her teaching position for refusing to cancel her subscription to that same newspaper.
Sarah was encouraged to be outspoken, to accept nothing, and question all things. Perhaps it was because of just such instruction, that it contributed to a crisis of faith for Sarah that she experienced in 1825. At the age of 20, it is recorded of her that she said, “I would give words to be a sincere believer, to go to my bible as I used to, but I cannot.”
Can you feel those words? Can you feel that yearning for that closeness, that nearness that she had once known? In 1829, Sarah’s father passed away, which caused Sarah to sink into a debilitating depression that would last for four years. As time passed, Sarah took up the pen where her father left off, becoming an outspoken champion of the oppressed, and an early feminist. She wrote articles, essays, poems, many of which were political in nature. And somewhere during that time, Sarah’s faith was renewed. We don’t know all of how or why, but she would write with insight, “It is in the divine spirit of love, swelling in our own hearts, that we must seek and find our God.”
Oh, there is wisdom there. Sarah learned the great and comforting truth of mortality, that God is indeed, near us. He is a God of hand, she wrote, and not a God afar off. I had to look at that twice. He is a God of hand and not a God afar off. He’s right here.
In 1834, Sarah met and married William Bridges Adams, a widowed engineer and an inventor. She told him I will marry you, but I won’t do housework. But he encouraged Sarah’s talents in other areas. At his urging, she became an accomplished actress. She had a very short but successful career on stage that was stopped because ill health, the lingering effects of tuberculosis that would ultimately end her life at the age of 43, made it impossible for Sarah to maintain the rigors of acting on stage. And so Sarah returned to writing.
By 1840, Sarah had joined a non-conformist Unitarian Church in England. It is reported that her minister wanted a new hymn to accompany his next Sunday sermon. He was preaching on Genesis 28:11-19 which is the account of Jacob’s Ladder, where Jacob on a quest to honor the covenant of the at the urging of his parents, sets out on a journey. And on that journey, he has a dream in which he sees a great ladder reaching up to heaven. On that ladder, Jacob sees angels ascending and descending. The Lord comes and stands beside Jacob and promises, “I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of.”
With that passage in mind, Sarah’s Minister asked her to write a poem to accompany this remarkable passage. After pouring over the Scripture, Sarah returned a week later with the poem, which her talented sister, Eliza, a composer, then set to music. The sermon was preached, the hymn was performed and loved. It would be caught up and performed again and again.
Now, more than 180 years later, though some of the words had been slightly altered and there are various tunes to which it is sung, the hymn from that day remains one of the most familiar and loved. It is a prayer, a yearning of the soul that God will come and stand beside us, Nearer My God, To Thee. These are the words Sarah Flowers Adams wrote:
“Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
E’en though it be a cross that raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be, nearer, my God, to Thee.
Nearer, my God, to Thee, nearer to Thee!
Though like the wanderer, the sun gone down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone;
Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God, to Thee.”
I’ve always been very fond of those hymns that speak the prayers that I can’t utter.
Now, we live in the most troubled times of recent history. I can’t remember a time when things have ever looked like this and been as crazy as it is right now. The hearts of men wax colder than they’ve ever been and darkness benights the minds and hearts of men the world over. The constant bombardment of media gloom steals our hope and destroys our peace, but it will not last. We have been here before and came through it.
Third Story: There is No Peace 16:51
1861 was a similarly dark, troubled, confused and uncertain time in the United States. Civil war loomed contention, hate, divisiveness tore the nation apart and threats abounded. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the acclaimed poet wrote, “Six states have left the Union led by South Carolina. President Buchanan, he said, is an antediluvian President who does not care what happens if he only gets safety through his term. We owe the present state of things mainly to him. He has sympathized with the dis-unionists. It is now too late to put the fire out. We must let it burn out.”
Henry opposed slavery, but he opposed civil war even more. But then came word on April 12, 1861, “News comes that Fort Sumter is attacked, and the war begins.”
Who can foresee the end? Peace was shattered by cannon fire and the world as they knew it in the United States, was in sudden turmoil. Then July 9, just three months later, July 9, 1861, Henry’s beloved [and I don’t use the word lightly] beloved wife, Fanny Appleton Longfellow was sealing some packages with hot wax when it is reported that a match dropped to the floor and ignited her light summer dress on fire. She ran to the study where Longfellow was and he attempted to put the fire out. But Fanny was badly burned and passed away the next day. Henry’s grief was deep and prolonged so much, that at times, he himself feared that he would be sent to an asylum. So debilitating was it.
One heavy year later after his wife’s death, Henry wrote, “I can make no record of these days. Better to leave them wrapped in silence. Perhaps someday God will give me peace.”
If that were not enough, in March 1863, Henry’s oldest son, Charles, aged 19, boarded a train for Washington DC, and against his father’s wishes, joined the Union army. On December 1, 1863, Henry was sitting down to dinner at his Cambridge, Massachusetts home, when he received a telegram that Charles had been severely wounded in the Battles of Mine Run. Henry quickly went south and brought his son home for what would be a lengthy recovery. Henry would summarize these days thus, “I have been through a great deal of trouble and anxiety.”
It is out of this series of tragic events that on Christmas Day 1864, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned the following words:
“I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
I thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along th’unbroken song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day
A voice, a chime, a chant sublime,
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men.”
The poem was written when the civil war still tore at the nation’s heart. When the poem was set to music in 1872. And in the book that most of you know, the next two stanzas of Longfellow’s poem were left out, as they have been in the singing of the sacred Christmas hymn ever since. But they tell the full story behind the hymn. Longfellow’s poem continued thus,
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, goodwill to men!”
And it is here, like the peeling bells of Longfellow’s church, that his message sounds with ringing clarity, Longfellow concluded,
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, goodwill to men.”
And so it will be for us. God is not dead. The wrong and all those who supported it will fail. And the righteousness of Jesus Christ will prevail with peace. Have no fear!
Final Story: The Priest of the Poor23:16
Final story for the night. This last story is called “The Priest of the Poor”. Joseph Franz Mohr was born in Salzburg, Austria on the 11th of December 1792. Joseph grew up without his father. With just his mother, grandmother and a stepsister. Notwithstanding their poverty, Joseph, however displayed uncommon talent and intelligence and was sponsored to obtain a university education where at the same time Joseph singing in the choir and played the violin.
After graduation in 1811, Joseph enrolled in the seminary to become a priest, which required special permission from the church. Permission was granted and by 1815, he was ordained a priest at the tender age of 23. In that same year, Joseph was appointed assistant priest at Mariapfarr. It was there in 1816 that he wrote these now famous words:
Silent night, holy night! All is calm, all is bright
Round yon virgin mother and Child. Holy Infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace, Sleep in heavenly peace.
On August 25, 1817, Joseph Mohr became the assistant priest in the new parish of Obendorf. It was there that he met and became friends with Franz Gruber, who oversaw the choir and organ at the church at St. Nikola. Just before Christmas 1818, Joseph Mohr brought the poem ‘Silent Night’ that he had written to friend Gruber and asked him to compose a melody. Gruber agreed and composed a most fitting and tender melody. And together, the two friends sang the song for the first time in the church at St. Nikola. Following the Christmas mass, Joseph accompanied on the guitar.
From there, Joseph Mohr went on to a life of dedicated service to the church and to his people. He became known as the “The Priest of the Poor”. He passed away December 4, 1848. His only estate was his guitar. Joseph Mohr never witnessed the success that his tender sacred Christmas hymn would have throughout the world.
You might find just this one more thing interesting. The Christmas hymn ‘Silent Night is Christmas. It captures our heart and our soul and invokes the peace. That was the wondrous birth of the Prince of Peace. And maybe it’s all together fitting that Joseph Mohr was the one given those meaningful words. For you see, Joseph Mohr’s birth was considered a crime. That’s right, a crime. He was born out of wedlock, abandoned by his father, shunned by society and threw it all in because of its stigmatized by his church. And yet, like the master he served, he loved and lifted the children of the poor.
My dear friends, it has been a joy to be with you tonight and share these stories. I hope and pray that the Lord Almighty is with you this week. And that you have a wonderful, powerful, courageous and fun-filled week. Good night, and God bless.
Thank you for listening. Many of the stories you heard today have been published and are archived at glennrawsonstories.com. If you would like more information you can communicate with us there. We will be back again with another podcast next week.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.