Blest Be The Tie That Binds
Blest Be the Tie That Binds
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love:
The fellowship of kindred minds
Is like to that above.
Before our Father’s throne
We pour our ardent prayers;
Our fears, our hopes, our aims are one,
Our comforts and our cares.
We share each other’s woes,
Our mutual burdens bear,
And often for each other flows
The sympathizing tear.
When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
ORPHANED when he was twelve, then forced to work fourteen hours a day in a sweatshop, John Fawcett learned to read by candlelight. He was converted at sixteen under the preaching of George Whitefield, and he was ordained a Baptist minister at the age of twenty-five. He began his ministry at a poor church in Wainsgate in northern England. The small congregation could only afford to pay him a minimal salary, partly in potatoes and wool.
After seven years of ministry, Fawcett received a call to the prestigious Carter’s Lane Church in London. But as he was saying his farewells and saw the tears on the faces of his people, he changed his mind and decided to stay.
Not long afterward, he wrote this hymn for the congregation at Wainsgate. He recognized that the bond of love he knew there was worth more than any material wealth.
Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father.
Ephesians 4:3-6
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