I Have Found a Hiding Place

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Words: Charles Frederick Weigle (b. Nov. 20, 1871; d. Dec, 3, 1966)
Music: Gladys Blanchard Muller (no data found)

Links:
Wordwise Hymns (Charles Weigle)
The Cyber Hymnal (Charles Weigle)
Hymnary.org

Note: Charles Weigle was an American evangelist and hymn writer who wrote more than a thousand songs. He wrote Living for Jesus (“Living for Jesus, O what peace!”) and No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus (for which, years ago, there were more radio requests to hear this song than any other). Teaming with Gladys Muller, Weigle also wrote a fine gospel song entitled I Sing of Thee. Today’s song was also popular a generation or so ago.

Many know the story of Anne Frank (1929-1945), a Jewish girl who went into hiding with her family, in Amsterdam, during the Nazi occupation. They were eventually discovered, arrested by the Gestapo, and sent to a concentration camp. Anne’s father Otto was the only member of the family who survived the war. Anne died, likely of typhus, in Bergen-Belsen, at the age of fifteen.

The two years before that were spent in some rooms concealed behind a bookcase in the building where her father worked. There is a certain irony in that. A bookcase provided the entry to their hiding place, and it was a book, later translated into sixty languages, that made Anne Frank world famous. Aspiring to be a journalist in years to come, she began keeping a diary of their time in concealment.

It is those insightful pages that were published posthumously as The Secret Annex (now titled The Diary of Anne Frank). In it she wrote, “I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift [the diary, a birthday gift].”

There are many unlikely heroes of the war who protected the Jews or helped them escape. Oscar Schindler was a Nazi business man who, in spite of his political connections, risked his life to save twelve hundred of Jewish people.

The Christian family of Corrie ten Boom loved the Jewish people, hid many of them in a secret room, and helped them escape. Corrie and her sister Betsie were eventually sent to the Ravensbruck camp. Corrie survived the horrors of the war but Betsie did not. Before she died she said to her sister, “There is no pit so deep that He [God] is not deeper still.” There is great truth there. The ultimate hiding place for God’s children is God Himself.

“The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deut. 33:27). “I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust’” (Ps. 91:2).

Sometimes, in answer to prayer, God delivers us from our troubles and trials. Other times, He gives us the grace to go through them and endure them (II Cor. 12:7-10).

Charles Weigle was sitting on his front porch in Sebring, Florida, one day in 1942. He started thinking about all the different names and titles for Christ found in the Bible. He’s called the Saviour, the Lamb of God, the Lord, our great High Priest, and dozens more meaningful things. Charles Weigle began with a refrain that says:

Jesus, Rock of Ages, let me hide in Thee;
Jesus, Rose of Sharon, sweet Thou art to me;
Lily of the Valley, Bright and Morning Star,
Fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

Later, a friend urged him to add some stanzas and make it a full song. He took the names mentioned in the refrain and expanded on them in the rest of the piece, beginning with the Rock, a Bible title used many times.

¤ He is “the Rock of my salvation” (II Sam. 22:47)

¤ “My rock of refuge….my rock and my fortress” (Ps. 31:2-3)

¤ “A refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat” (Isa. 25:4)

¤ “The Lord is everlasting strength”–which could be rendered, “the Lord is [my] Rock of Ages” (Isa. 26:4).

The song begins:

1) I have found a hiding place when sore distressed,
Jesus, Rock of Ages strong and true;
In a weary land I in His shadow rest,
He is my strength in all that I do.

Questions:
1) What are the characteristics of a large rock, or rocky cliff, that make it a helpful picture of Christ?

2) What name or title of Christ has special meaning for you?

Links:
Wordwise Hymns (Charles Weigle)
The Cyber Hymnal (Charles Weigle)
Hymnary.org