Turn You Eyes Upon Jesus ~ James Rice ~ Lyrics
Turn You Eyes Upon Jesus ~ Performed by: James Rice. The Heavenly Vision is a hymn written by Helen Howarth Lemmel. It was in the year 1918, when she was fifty-four years old, that Helen Lemmel wrote the beautiful and challenging hymn, "Turn your eyes upon Jesus." She had been visiting with a missionary friend who had shared with her a gospel tract by Lillias Trotter, titled "Focused." The pamphlet included the statement: "So then, turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness." The words seemed to repeat themselves over and over in her mind during the following week. In her memoirs she reports the following:Today the chorus is most widely known. The song was published in l922 by the British National Sunday School Union in the book called Glad Songs, which contained sixty-six other songs by Helen Lemmel and was used extensively by the Keswick Bible Conference. It was at this conference that "Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" first gained popularity as a hymn of invitation and dedication to the life of a deeper commitment to Christ.