Turn My Eyes

Turn My Eyes

The hymn 'Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus' was written by Helen Lemmel in 1922 after a friend sent her a pamphlet with a phrase from missionary Isabella Lilias Trotter: 'So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.' Lemmel later said: 'Suddenly, 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 Lord Himself had put it there.' The prayer of Psalm 119:37 had become a song.

Psalm 119:37 is a prayer of redirection: 'turn my eyes.' The psalmist acknowledges that his eyes wander toward what is worthless (shav' — empty, vain, temporary). He asks not for willpower to resist but for God to redirect his gaze. There is profound humility in this prayer: it acknowledges that the wandering is real and that the redirection requires divine help. The second line — 'preserve my life according to your word' — connects the direction of the eyes to the quality of the life: where your eyes go, your life follows. The person whose eyes are fixed on God's word is a person whose life is preserved by it. What worthless thing have your eyes been drawn to today?