Precious Lord, Take My Hand

Thomas Dorsey’s father was a preacher and a sharecropper.  His mother was a church organist.   Already from the time he was a boy, Thomas wanted a career in music.  At age eleven, he left school to take a job in a local vaudeville theater in Atlanta, Georgia – where the family was living.  From ages twelve to fourteen he was earning a living playing piano in bars and brothels and for house parties.  By the time he was seventeen, he headed to Chicago to pursue his music further.  After working for a time in a steel mill in Gary, Indiana, Dorsey studied music at the Chicago School of Composing and Arranging.  He found success in the music business in Chicago as a composer and arranger and piano player.  He was known as “The Whispering Piano Player” from playing after-hours parties where the music had to be kept quiet enough so as not to attract the attention of the police.

Dorsey was so frantically engaged in his musical life that at age 21, he suffered a nervous breakdown.  He went back home to Atlanta to recuperate.  His mother wanted him to stop playing the blues; he should “serve the Lord,” she said.  He didn’t listen. He went back to Chicago.  Coming to be known as “Georgia Tom,” he amassed even greater musical success as a sought-after band leader or accompanist for blues performers such as Ma Rainey, Tampa Red Whittaker, Scrapper Blackwell, Big Bill Broonzy, Frankie Jaxson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Memphis Minnie, and Victoria Spivey.

In 1925, Dorsey married his sweetheart, Nettie Harper, who was Ma Rainey’s wardrobe manager.  But Dorsey continued to struggle with depression and mental stress and suffered a second major breakdown in 1926.  He was suicidal and unable to compose or perform music. Doctors didn’t seem to help.  Taking time off didn’t fix things.  His sister-in-law urged him to come to church, and he did.  He even visited a faith-healer, who told him, “Brother Dorsey, there is no reason for you to be looking so poorly and feeling so badly. The Lord has too much work for you to let you die.”  From then on, Dorsey began to do what his mother had always wanted – write and play music for the Lord.  He saw connections between the blues and gospel music.  He once said, “If a woman has lost a man, a man has lost a woman, his feeling reacts to the blues; he feels like expressing it.  The same thing acts for a gospel song. Now you’re not singing the blues; you’re singing gospel, good news song, singing about the Creator. But it’s the same feeling, a grasping of the heart.”

But most churches didn’t want his music. From 1928-1931, as Dorsey tried to sell his gospel music to churches, he was rebuffed. The churches didn’t like how he infused sacred music with blues and jazz. His music didn’t align with the conservative culture preachers were trying to promote. Dorsey had to return to composing and playing the blues in order to make a living.  But he kept working on his gospel-based music at the same time.

In August, 1932, Thomas Dorsey had gone to St. Louis where he was to be the featured soloist at a large church revival meeting.  His wife was in the last month of pregnancy with their first child.  While he was in St. Louis, he received a telegram.  Nettie had gone into labor and had died in childbirth … and the baby died too.  The man was overcome with grief.  It took many days before he could to pull himself together at all.  When he did, it was by playing piano.  And at the piano, about a month later, in the midst of all that grief, he wrote the most famous song of his musical career: “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.”  In the years to come, Dorsey continued writing songs for the church and influencing church music.  Writer of around 800 songs in his career, he became known as the father of gospel music in America.

The circumstances of our lives don’t always go in the direction we envision. We have hopes. We have dreams.  We have plans and ambitions.  And then things don’t go as we plan.  Life takes turns in directions we didn’t expect.  Sometimes everything comes crashing down around us. Our lives collapse in on top of us.  Problems pile up to where we can’t see past them.  We find ourselves shaken, confused, wondering what happened, wondering where was God.   We so often don’t see what God plans to do for us and with us as he shepherds us through the valley of the shadow of death or whatever turmoil he lets us go through.  What we do know is that God intends always what is good for us, that in all things he is working for our good – for our eternal good, in line with his eternal purposes (cf. Romans 8:28).  God never abandons those whom he has called as his children.  Our precious Lord is always working to bring us home to himself, bring us back to his promises, to anchor us in the love and hope that are never in doubt – in the Messiah, in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Thomas Dorsey wanted a career in popular music.  The Lord chastened him severely, and turned him toward a deepness of faith and toward writing songs that convey the comfort of the gospel – songs that have greatly benefited Christ’s church.

• Prayer:
  Heavenly Father, teach us to trust you through the whole course of our lives – not only when things are going well or in ways we hoped or planned, but also when life is a struggle, when things go horribly wrong, when tragedies strike us.  You hold us in your hand.  You guide us by your Spirit through your Word.  Keep us in your care, and help us to confess that whatever happens, you will be working in all things to bring about good for us as your children – with the ultimate good being that we join you in life eternal. In Jesus’ name.  Amen.