"Courage, my soul..."
Charles Albert Tindley was born in Berlin, MD in 1851. His father was enslaved; his mother was a free person. After the Civil War, he moved to Philadelphia where he and family attended what was then called Bainbridge Street Methodist Episcopal Church and he became the church janitor. From there he discerned a call to ordained ministry and as an itinerant Methodist pastor he served several churches in the Philadelphia area before being sent back to Bainbridge Street to pastor there. Starting around 1901, Rev. Tindley also began publishing hymns that he wrote, five of which are in The United Methodist Hymnal. I learned these hymns, and this history, during the two years that I lived in Philadelphia and happened to find what is now called Tindley Temple United Methodist Church. I found them with a telephone and a GPS; I was looking for a church home near my apartment. Tindley was the only church that answered the phone when I called, so that’s where I went and that’s where I stayed and worshiped for those two years. I had no idea when I first walked in the doors that it was a historic Black church. One of the Tindley hymns that I learned that is not in The United Methodist Hymnal is “The Storm Is Passing Over.” This is the first verse plus chorus:
“Courage, my soul, and let us journey on,
Tho’ the night is dark it won’t be very long.
Thanks be to God, the morning light appears,
And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! The storm is passing over, Hallelujah!”
Sometimes the night is dark and feels long. We journey on. Some days are good, some are not. Some days go by quickly and some drag. Sometimes dawn feels a long way off and we don’t know how to reach it. However, the dawn is not of our own making. The morning light will appear in its own time.
(Verse 2:)
“Billows rolling high, and thunder shakes the ground,
Lightning's flash and tempest all around,
Jesus walks the sea and calms the angry waves,
And the storm is passing over, Hallelujah!”
Billows can feel all-encompassing and overwhelming. Psalm 42 talks about when “all of your waves and your billows have swept over me.” In a hurricane, the wall of the eye is the most intense part of the storm. If you’re directly in the path of a hurricane, then you experience these walls twice: once as you enter the eye and again as you leave the eye, and the storm continues its path. The pattern isn’t a bell-curve that peaks once; it peaks twice as the storm passes over.
(Verse 3:)
“The stars have disappeared, and distant lights are dim,
My soul is filled with fears, the seas are breaking in.
I hear the Master cry, "Be not afraid, ’tis I,"
And the storm will soon be over, Hallelujah!”
So, have courage. Be brave. You are not alone. I’m not going to say “don’t be afraid,” because zero fears isn’t realistic. However, you can pay less attention to them and more attention to what’s life-giving and life-affirming. You may be in the middle of a storm. Life may be unsettling. Find your life preserver. Take heart. The morning light will come. Tell your soul “Courage!” and journey on.
(If you want to listen to this hymn, I recommend: Detroit Mass Choir - The Storm Is Passing Over )