“The Touch of the Master's Hand”

Last month, a Facebook friend posted the poem “The Touch of the Master’s Hand,” a poem I remember reading and using in sermons, in the 1950s. Now, sixty-five years later, I have mixed emotions about that once-popular poem penned a hundred years ago.

Rather than take the space to paste the poem here, I am giving you this link to read it online. Or you can listen to it impressively recited on YouTube—and here is the link (with subtitles) to it being sung in 2017. 

The Poet

Myra Brooks Welch was best known for the poem introduced above. Myra (1877~1959) was born in Illinois, but in 1920 she and her family moved to La Verne, Calif. They were members of the Church of the Brethren, the Anabaptist denomination that was prominent in that city.

Ms. Welch reported that she heard a speaker address a group of students on the power of God to bring out the best in people. She said that she was inspired by what she heard and wrote “The Touch of the Master’s Hand” in just 30 minutes!

Her poem was published in the February 26, 1921, issue of The Gospel Messenger, the Church of the Brethren’s official church paper (now known as just Messenger).

The Poem

Myra Welch’s poem spread across the country, and I heard it and was favorably impressed by it, while still a teen-aged Southern Baptist in Missouri—and as some of you know, I started preaching in 1954 at age 16.

Wikipedia (here) gives a good, succinct summary: “The poem tells of a battered old violin that is about to be sold as the last item at an auction for a pittance, until a violinist steps out of the audience and plays the instrument, demonstrating its beauty and true value.”

Then comes the primary point: “The violin then sells for $3,000 instead of a mere $3. The poem ends by comparing this instrument touched by the hand of a master musician to the life of a sinner that is touched by the hand of God.” (Myra, though, no doubt considered Jesus Christ to be the Master.)

The Problem

While I have no doubt that there are many people whose lives have been significantly changed by having been touched by “the Master’s hand," sadly, there seems to be far too little evidence of such change in far too many people who claim to be followers of Jesus.

Those who are evangelicals, as I was in the 1950s, are the Christians most likely to resonate with the message of Ms. Welch’s poem. But now it seems that some conservative evangelicals are prominently pushing policies that seem opposed to the teachings of Jesus.

There are unfortunate moral lapses evident in the lives of some Christians in all denominations, as well as people of other religions and of no religion. But I am writing here not about personal piety but about problematic positions on public policy, of which there are many.

The problem is not just one in this country, however. Think of the situation in Ethiopia, for example. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is said to be (here) “a devout Evangelical Pentecostal Christian of the Full Gospel Believer’s Church.”

The Ethiopian PM reportedly attends church regularly and “occasionally ministers in preaching and teaching.” Further, “he frequently underscores the importance of faith.” By his public religiosity, he seems to be an example of a man who has been “touched by the Master’s hand.”

To the great chagrin of many, though, in the past year the policies of Abiy Ahmed have led to what is being called “war crimes.” While garnering little news coverage in this country, the civil war in Ethiopia has been marked by military atrocities as well as by a huge humanitarian crisis.

The Oct. 9 issue of The Economist reports that “Ethiopia is deliberately starving its own citizens.” Some 400,000 people in the northern part of the country are facing “ catastrophic hunger.”

How could such problems possibly result from the policies of a man who has been “touched by the Master’s hand?”

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** For a broader description of the current civil war in Ethiopia, see this article by Philip Jenkins in the Oct. 8 issue of The Christian Century.