LAST year while visiting the home of my former class teacher, all of ninety-six years, she asked me to sing to her and I sang my favourite, ‘If His Eye Is On the Sparrow!” In my mind I wanted to leave her with the assurance that if a God above could be concerned about a little sparrow, then surely
He would be more than concerned about her. It was later I decided to get to know more about this song, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the same songwriter had penned another favourite of mine, ‘God Will Take Care of You!’ And how did that hymn come about? One Sunday morning, the story goes, the Rev Stillman Martin was invited to preach at a church some distance away. And then it was he found his wife was very ill. He was just preparing to cancel his speaking engagement and be with her, since he would be gone for a considerable number of hours, when their young son spoke up saying, “Father, don’t you think that if God wants you to preach today, He will take care of mother while you are away?”
Agreeing with his son, Rev Stillman kept his preaching appointment, and the service proved to be unusually blessed by God. Returning that evening he found his wife, Civilla, greatly improved and she had also spent her time, writing the words of this beautiful new hymn, inspired by the words of their son.
Yes, God will take care of us, when we are doing the work He wants us to do. I do remember an incident, when I was asked to speak and conduct a memorial service for a former employee of the Late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
A few days before the memorial service, I lost my voice. ‘Lord,’ I prayed, ‘If You want me to speak, give me back my voice!’ I prayed, but no voice returned.
The day arrived and the wife of the person who the memorial was for, and who had been insistent I conduct it, looked uncertainly at me, as she heard unintelligible sounds coming from my throat. Just before I started the service, I handed out hymn sheets, then went into another room, and called a friend, “Please pray for me!”
I told him, “That if it is meant for me to speak, God will give me a voice to speak. We started the first hymn, and I croaked through the first verse, and then suddenly in the next verse, my voice came back in absolute totality, and I raised it to the rafters as I sang out. Yes, dear friends, God will take care of you, if you are doing what He has placed you here to do, and when that work is done, He will still take care of you as He takes you up, to be with Him..!
