The Story Behind 'Great Is Thy Faithfulness'

"Great Is Thy Faithfulness" was written in 1923 by Thomas Chisholm, an ordinary Kentucky man who set out not to mark a single great crisis but to celebrate God's steady, daily faithfulness through an unremarkable life. Unlike many beloved hymns, this one has no shipwreck, no deathbed, no dramatic rescue behind it — and that quiet origin is exactly what makes its story so moving.

Who wrote 'Great Is Thy Faithfulness'?

Thomas Obadiah Chisholm was born in 1866 in a log cabin in Franklin, Kentucky. He never finished a formal high school education, yet by sixteen he was teaching at the same little country school he had attended as a boy.

His working life wandered. He served as a newspaper editor, then later as a life insurance agent in Indiana. His health was fragile, and there were long stretches when he could not work steadily.

What stayed constant was his pen. Across his lifetime Chisholm wrote more than a thousand poems, many of them published in religious periodicals. He was not a famous preacher or a hymn-writing celebrity — he was a quiet believer who kept noticing God's goodness and kept writing it down.

What is the story behind the hymn?

Here is the part that surprises people: there is no tragedy behind this hymn. Chisholm later said plainly that he had no special circumstance that prompted the words. There was no flood, no funeral, no midnight of the soul.

Instead, the hymn rose out of an ordinary observation. Looking back across his years — the frail health, the modest jobs, the small daily provisions — Chisholm was struck by how God had simply been faithful. Day after day, season after season, the Lord had kept showing up.

In 1923 he sent several of his poems to his friend William Marion Runyan, a musician connected with the Moody Bible Institute. Runyan was so moved by this particular text that he prayed over it before composing the tune, asking that the music would carry the words well. The hymn was published that same year.

For a time it stayed quiet, sung in modest gatherings. Then it found its way into the chapel services of Moody Bible Institute, where students sang it so often it became almost a college anthem. Decades later the hymn spread worldwide, carried by gospel campaigns and radio into churches across the globe.

What Bible passage inspired the hymn?

The heart of the hymn is one short passage from the Old Testament: Lamentations 3:22-23. In the King James Version Chisholm knew, it reads that the Lord's mercies "are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."

That setting matters. Lamentations is a book of grief — the prophet Jeremiah weeping over a ruined Jerusalem. And right in the middle of all that sorrow, the writer lifts his eyes and remembers that God's compassion never runs dry.

So the phrase Chisholm borrowed was never meant to describe an easy life. It was written by a man surrounded by rubble who still trusted that mercy would arrive again with the sunrise. Chisholm, with his own quiet hardships, understood that exactly.

The third verse widens the lens to creation itself — "summer and winter, and springtime and harvest" — echoing God's promise after the flood that the seasons would not cease. The hymn moves from grief to nature to the soul, all resting on one idea: God keeps His word.

Why does this hymn still resonate today?

For most of us, life is not a string of dramatic miracles. It is ordinary — work, meals, bills, bedtimes, small joys, quiet worries. That is precisely the life this hymn was written for.

A few reasons it endures:

• It speaks to ordinary faith. You do not need a crisis to sing it. You only need to look back and notice God's daily provision.
• It is honest about hard seasons. Born from a verse in Lamentations, it never pretends life is painless.
• It is built for memory. The refrain repeats, the imagery is simple, and children learn it quickly.
• It points upward, not inward. The focus is God's character, not our feelings about Him.

If you love hymns that carry a true story, you may also enjoy the story behind 'It Is Well With My Soul', which was born from real loss, or the story behind 'Amazing Grace' and its unlikely author.

How can families study this hymn at home?

This hymn is an easy one to bring into a kitchen-table devotion or a homeschool morning. Its plain language and clear Scripture root make it approachable for every age.

A simple way to begin:

1. Read the source first. Open Lamentations 3:22-23 together before you sing a single line.
2. Sing one verse slowly. Don't rush. Let the words settle.
3. Ask one question. Where did we see God's faithfulness this week? Let everyone answer, even the youngest.
4. Copy a line by hand. Writing "morning by morning new mercies I see" slows the mind and plants the words deep.
5. Watch for it. Through the week, name small mercies as they come — a meal, a friend, a quiet afternoon.

That last habit is the whole point of the hymn: learning to notice. If you want a fuller framework, our guide to leading a hymn study at home walks through it step by step, and why hymn copywork helps children explains how handwriting and faith grow together.

A small, helpful note

Because the 1923 text is in the public domain in the United States, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" is wonderful for copywork, memory cards, and framed wall art at home — no permissions to worry about. If you would like printable hymn-study pages, copywork sheets, and devotionals built around hymns like this one, you are welcome to browse our shop when it suits you.

However you use it, the invitation of this hymn stays the same. Look back over your own ordinary days, the plain and the painful alike, and notice how often God simply kept His word. Morning by morning, the mercies came. They still do.