A storm, a cleft in a rock, and a playing card
Comments (0) “…they hid among the rocks”
1 Samuel 13:6 (NIV)
One of the truly great hymn writers of the Christian church was Augustus Toplady (1740-1778). He was an Anglican priest and apparently had a remarkable experience one day as he was travelling and a violent rain storm occurred.
Toplady took refuge in a cleft of a rock along the way and it provided him with some shelter from the fury of the storm. While waiting out the storm from his place of safety some thoughts came to mind of how God is a rock and shelters His people from the storms of life.
Then he started to form a poem in his mind. It seems a playing card was on the ground near his feet and he took it up and wrote the verse that he had composed. It was thought that it was published just 3 years before his death and 12 years after it’s composition.
Read the lines of the first verse of this hymn:
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood, from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure; save from wrath and make me pure.
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