Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus

O soul, are you weary and troubled?

No light in the darkness you see?

There’s light for a look at the Savior,

And life more abundant and free!

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,

Look full in His wonderful face,

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

In the light of His glory and grace.

Through death into life everlasting

He passed, and we follow Him there;

Over us sin no more hath dominion—

For more than conquerors we are!

His word shall not fail you—He promised;

Believe Him, and all will be well:

Then go to a world that is dying,

His perfect salvation to tell!

HELEN HOWARTH LEMMEL (1864–1961)

Copyright © 1922. Singspiration Music/ASCAP. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Benson Music Group, Inc.

HELEN LEMMEL was already a noted Christian singer and voice teacher on that day in 1918 when a friend of hers, a missionary, handed her a tract called “Focused.” It said: “So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.”

The tract struck a chord in Lemmel. “Suddenly,” she said later, “as if commanded to stop and listen, I stood still, and singing in my soul and spirit was the chorus, with not one conscious moment of putting word to word to make rhyme, or note to note to make melody. The verses were written the same week, after the usual manner of composition.”

Later the same year, the song was published in London in pamphlet form. It quickly became a favorite of Christians in England (especially at the Keswick Convention), then in America, and around the world.

Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of heaven, where Christ sits in the place of honor at God’s right hand. Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.

Colossians 3:1-3