Hiding In God’s Towering Rock

Psalm 61

For the choir director: A psalm of David, to be accompanied by stringed instruments.

1O God, listen to my cry!

Hear my prayer!

2From the ends of the earth,

I will cry to you for help,

for my heart is overwhelmed.

Lead me to the towering rock of safety,

3for you are my safe refuge,

a fortress where my enemies cannot reach me.

4Let me live forever in your sanctuary,

safe beneath the shelter of your wings!

Interlude

5For you have heard my vows, O God.

You have given me an inheritance reserved for those who fear your name.

6Add many years to the life of the king!

May his years span the generations!

7May he reign under God’s protection forever.

Appoint your unfailing love and faithfulness to watch over him.

8Then I will always sing praises to your name

as I fulfill my vows day after day.

With God’s help we will do mighty things,

for he will trample down our foes.

For more than twenty years William O. Cushing pastored small churches in New York. It wasn’t easy, and it certainly wasn’t prosperous, but he and his wife loved it, and their congregations loved them. Then suddenly his wife died, and Cushing went into depression. Soon a creeping paralysis of his vocal cords came upon him, and he could no longer preach. At the age of forty-seven, he felt all alone in a wilderness.

What could he do?

Then he remembered how a few years earlier he had written a hymn for his Sunday school children, “When He Cometh.” God had used that little song in great ways. Maybe God could use other things he wrote.

About this time he received a letter from Ira Sankey, who was the song leader for famous preacher Dwight L. Moody. Sankey asked Cushing to supply a new hymn for Moody. Cushing prayed, and then the words of “Hiding in Thee” seemed to come to him. Cushing later said, “It was the outgrowth of many tears, many heart conflicts and yearnings of which the world could know nothing.” Over the next thirty years, Cushing wrote more than three hundred gospel hymns.

Like David, William Cushing had learned the blessing of hiding in God’s towering rock of safety (verse 2). God offers this same rock of safety to us as well.

How oft in the conflict, when pressed by the foe,

I have fled to my Refuge and breathed out my woe;

How often when trials like sea billows roll,

Have I hidden in Thee, O Thou Rock of my soul.

Hiding in Thee, hiding in Thee,

Thou blest Rock of Ages, I’m hiding in Thee.

WILLIAM O. CUSHING

Notable Quotable

“The rock that is higher than he [verse 2, KJV] must be higher than any man; for David was a mighty monarch. It must therefore be divine.”

FOUNTAIN ELWIN