I have been reading Charlotte Elliot’s famous hymn, Just as I am without one plea all this week and I intentionally took time to sing the hymn and reflect on it as well.
I have been richly blessed by the words and its capture of a deep spiritual experience. Hymns are simple and yet profound. They bring a wealth of spiritual insight and experience. Sadly, we no longer look for God in the ‘familiar’ and the ‘ordinary’.
The hymn was written by Charlotte Elliott who was torn apart by intense feelings of uselessness and despair. Here’s the amazing story:
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind;
Yes, all I need, in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come!
I was particularly touched by the phrase “sight, riches, healing of the mind, Yes all I need in thee to fine I come“. It is in God that we find all that we need to live ‘fully’ and ‘meaningfully’. We do live in a noisy world where competing voices try to drown each other to catch our attention. This is particularly true during Christmas. We go through the season ‘looking-good and feeling-good’ and our doubts, defeat and despair get drowned by all the ‘ jing-a-ling-a-ling’ around us.
This Christmas, What does God offer us? Perhaps, we can consider God’s offer of sight, riches and healing of the mind. Just as Charlotte Elliot, we need to be cured of our spiritual shortsightedness. May be, our worldview needs a slight correction. We need a satisfied life that helps us experience the good, the true and the beautiful. We need the healing of our minds. Surely, we get stuck in moments of doubt, desire, defeat and despair (even the best of us). Unfortunately, we can’t admit it. We wrestle with guilt and shame and yet walk through the real world with made-up faces. God bids us to come to him just as we are. He offers this open invitation not because of who we are but inspite of who we are.
He call us to come…to find in Him sight, riches and healing of the mind. His love breaks every barrier down (even the ones that we build around us). He pardons, cleanses and relieves… He gives us the strength to carry on.
Charlotte Elliott died when she was eighty-two years of age. Although she never regained normal health and she endured physical suffering. She wrote, “He knows, and He alone, what it is, day after day, hour after hour, to fight against bodily feelings of almost overpowering weakness, languor and exhaustion, to resolve not to yeild to slothfulness, depression and instability but to rise every morning determined to take for my motto, ‘If a man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.” Truly, we find in God all that we need to live ‘fully and ‘meaningfully’.
In all, Charlotte Elliott wrote approximately 150 hymns.Countless individuals around the world have been blessed by this hymn.
It’s Christmas time! God gives himself to us. He bids us to come to the manger where he once gave himself to humanity.
O come all you faithful, (even those who struggle to look joyful and triumphant), O come to Bethlehem. Come and behold him, the Lamb of God.
O come let us adore Him. Jesus Christ our lord. O lamb of God we come as we are…
Just as I am MP3 download
