I Need Thee Every Hour

I grew up listening to my father sing God’s praise as he worked in the fields and milked cows. Mother’s songs could be heard above the Oklahoma prairie wind as she hung clothes out to dry.

Walking the old California Mission Trail, I was often overcome with joyous memories of childhood days. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, after walking 200 miles in 12 days without a break, I arrived at Mission San Fernando on the outskirts of Los Angeles. It was too late to attend Sunday services, and I sat alone in the quiet chapel, listening to the organist practice the hymn “I Need Thee Every Hour.”

I closed my eyes and it felt like I was a child again, sitting with my family on a wooden church pew in our small rural Baptist church in Oklahoma. Every head was bowed as the congregation gently swayed back and forth with the music of this same hymn. It was not just a song—it was a prayer.

The prayer lingered for days afterward as our family went about our chores humming the words, our hearts affirming our need for God. My mother cooked the evening meal, and I heard the soft sound of her voice: “Temptations lose their power when Thou art nigh. I need Thee every hour, in joy or pain; come quickly and abide, or life is in vain.”

My consciousness returned to this time and this place, to old Mission San Fernando. There would be more battles ahead for me. I knew there would be hardship and suffering. The organist stopped her practicing. Long after the final vibration, I sat softly humming, softly singing, smiling and with tears flowing. “I need Thee, oh, I need Thee; every hour I need Thee; oh, bless me now, my Savior; I come to Thee.”

Dear Lord, how much we need you.

Edie Littlefield Sundby is the author of The Mission Walker. Despite less than one percent odds of survival when she was diagnosed with stage-four gallbladder cancer in 2007, she went on to walk the 1,600-mile California Mission Trail from Loreto, Mexico, to Sonoma, California.