Nearer My God To Thee

This hymn is probably most widely known for reportedly being the last musical piece the band on the sinking Titanic played before the boat tragically crashed into the sea in April 1912. The report was not able to be confirmed by eyewitnesses whose testimony were conflicting, however, Wallace Hartley, the ship’s bandleader who died when the ship sank along with all of the other musicians on board, was known to have liked the hymn very much and had even asked that it be played at his funeral when the time came.  So it isn’t far-fetched, knowing that his time was near as the ship went down, that he led his fellow musicians in the familiar strains.

It was also sung by the doomed crew and passengers of the SS Valencia, another large ocean liner as it sank off the Canadian Coast in 1906.

President William McKinley was said to have spoken the first few lines of this, his favorite hymn, as his last dying words in September 1901. 

The life of the author, Sarah Flower Adams, lasted only from 1805 to 1848 and was filled with loss, pain, sickness, and tragedy herself. She lost her mother at the age of five, and her father at the age of 20, leaving her sister as her only family.  A family friend and Minister William Fox took them into his home. He encouraged and sympathized with the lonely sisters encouraging them to use their musical and poetic talents in his chapel service.

Sarah wrote many hymns and poems and stories during that short time but often was ill and feeble. She fell ill to tuberculosis many times and was taking care of by her sister who was also often sickly and feeble.  Two short years after her sister passed Sarah succumbed to the disease at the age of only 43. She was buried beside her sister and parents. 

The scripture reference for the basis of the hymn is the story of Jacob’s dream in Genesis chapter 28. It accurately and poetically expresses that the life that we sometimes are dealt here on this earth is often filled with darkness and difficulty, even our rest being comfortless on a hard cold stone while we dream of heaven and homeland. 

The  most beautiful central focus of the hymn is the way,  the steps unto heaven in mercy given, representing Jesus our Savior, the only means upon which the grace and mercy of God can flow from heaven downward and on which we can be raised up from the difficulty and tragedy of this world homeward, to our happy future were “On joyful wing, cleaving the sky, sun, moon, and stars forgot, upwards I fly!” 

We hope that as you listen to this tender hymn that so many have sung in the darkest difficulties of their lives, that like theirs, your mind and your heart will be drawn upward from the darkness all around us to that happy day when sin and sadness will be no more. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nearer,_My_God,_to_Thee 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Fuller_Flower_Adams

“Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen.”
Revelation 1:7