Take My Life, and Let It Be: A Reflection
“Take My Life, and Let It Be” was written by Frances Ridley Havergal in 1874. She wrote the hymn after visiting some people and she met and praying with them. There were two daughters in the home she was visiting, and after one special night she prayed with them and they accepted Christ. It was late and she couldn’t sleep, so she wrote down the words as they came to her. They formed this hymn that we still sing today. According to Havergal, she wanted this song to be a prayer of asking God to draw us nearer to Him, and for Him to help us to reach others.
Despite this song being a hymn, its language is actually closer to what we could consider a contemporary worship song. In contemporary worship, the songs take on a position more from the individual, but as we see, this lyrical trend is used in Havergal’s hymn and is often misidentified as only a characteristic of contemporary worship. In the song, we are asking something of God, prayerfully, and we are responding to God’s work in us. We are surrendering to God’s will for our lives, so that we can be effective for His kingdom here on earth.
The hymn is incredibly poetic. It’s written in a 7.7.7.7.7 meter with the fifth line acting as a refrain of the fourth line. The first and second lines form a rhyming couplet as well as the third and fourth lines. The use of the rhyming is effective in making the song easy to remember, without losing the weight of its lyrical content. The song effectively uses language especially in the first stanza with “take my moments and my days; let them flow in endless praise,” and in the sixth stanza with “take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for thee,” just to name a few personal favorites. The language is simple yet compelling.
The tune most commonly associated with this hymn in Baptist life is HENDON. HENDON was composed by Cesar Milan around 1827. The tune is easily singable. The first major skip is a fourth and it comes right back to the note the skip started from. From there the song either moves in step wise motion or in thirds. This makes it easy for congregations to pick up on. The tune also seems to move in a logical manner, always coming back to one, three, and five in the chord structure. Both the tune and the poetic meter work in sync with each other so that the important words are emphasized at the right point in the song. Overall, this should be a tune that congregations should pick up on quickly.
This a great hymn of response to what God has called us to be. We should be faithful servants and be in prayerful consideration of His will for us and follow it, not out of pride, but out of obedience and love for Him. We are called to be the salt and light of the world and to go and make disciples of all nations. In her own recollection, the hymn author Frances Ridley Havergal summed it up the best. She said that “God calls us to a life of discipleship and our response should be ‘Here I am. Send me.’”
