Be Thou My Vision

By |Published On: May 22, 2018|Categories: 4-Minute Radio Program|

Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and I know you’re going to recognize this beautiful old hymn. And if you do, sing along with me, will you?

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Don’t you love that melody? It’s so lilting, so Irish. Although I never knew her, my grandmother (her maiden name was Anna Verona Casey), my grandmother immigrated to the United States from Northern Ireland when she was a child. She was Scots-Irish, I am told. Anna Verona married young and raised her four boys in the early 1900s. They used to tell me that their mother was a woman of vision, a stout-hearted Christian, a real woman of prayer. I can imagine her back when my uncles and my daddy were young, say around 1912 or 1915 (my father had me very late in life). I can just picture Anna Verona singing this hymn, “Be Thou My Vision” and I can picture her praying not only for my dad and his three brothers, but for all of my Christian life, I’ve always felt that grandmother, Anna Verona, must have been praying for me back then, way back then.

I think somebody always has to pray for them to come to Christ, right? And I think she must have been praying for me and the grandchildren she knew would be in the future. Come to think of it, all my sisters are Christians, and I believe virtually all my cousins and second cousins are strong believers. And friend, you gotta know that doesn’t happen without someone praying big time, right? And all of my cousins are convinced that that “someone” was the matriarch of the Eareckson clan, Anna Verona. Only a woman of vision would have enough, well, enough vision to pray that large and that far-distant into the future for her grandchildren and great grandchildren and great, great grandchildren.

And it’s why I love to sing this hymn. It’s a family hymn, I remember learning it as a little girl, and the tune, appropriately is an Irish melody. And when I sing it, I sing it as a prayer, for that matter, let me pray for you right now: ‘Lord Jesus, fill the vision of my friend listening this minute; be all that they see; when they open up their eyes in the morning, let my friend be satisfied with Your likeness, may You be the first thing in their sight. Give my listening friend 20/20 vision as it concerns the things in your Word. Would you please keep them from anything that would blind them to your leading in their lives. And I ask all this in Your name, Jesus… Amen.’

Friend, thank you for letting me pray for you. And you know, speaking of vision and the things that we see and sometimes are blind to, I’d very much like to hear your requests for prayer and if you’re stumbling in your walk with Christ, let us pray for you. Post your personal prayer request on my radio page today at joniandfriends.org. Or, share your prayer need on the Joni and Friends Facebook page because we so long to pray for you. We do it every morning, staff morning prayer time starts at 8:00 a.m. and all of us pray for friends like you because we all need vision to see the greatness and the glory and the goodness in our Savior, Jesus Christ. So post your prayer request today on my radio page or on the Joni and Friends Facebook page. God bless you and thanks for singing along on Joni and Friends. 

Music: “Be Thou My Vision” by Mary E. Byrne, Eleanor H. Hull, David Evans; Public Domain.

© Joni and Friends

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