Vital Sparks: Songs for Desperate Straits, Part 1

On Facebook, in the Sacred Harp Friends group, I asked the question, “What songs do you sing when you feel like you’re in desperate straights for whatever reason?” Of course, I meant “desperate straits,” but people understood what I meant (and corrected my misspelling kindly). I got lots of good answers, which did not surprise me at all.

The playlist: Songs for Desperate Straits

This is the human condition: we are “born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” We are beset with trials and distresses of all sorts: by illnesses, by our weakness and moral failures, by enemies both personal and national. What can we do? 

When I began to sing — twenty years ago, and heading into my fifties — I was most aware that people chose songs that were meaningful when they were in the midst of grave illness. The prototype for this is 86 POLAND:

God of my life, look gently down,
Behold the pains I feel.

In the 2025 edition of The Sacred Harp, 481t MILLBROOK was added; a song that many people hoped and expected would be added to the book. The words by Charles Wesley retell the story of how Jesus healed a man who had waited beside a “healing pool” for 38 years (John 5:1-15).

How long, Thou faithful God, shall I
Here in Thy ways forgotten lie?
When shall the means of healing be
The channels of Thy grace to me?

Sinners on ev’ry side step in,
And wash away their pain and sin;
But I, a helpless sin-sick soul,
Still lie expiring at the pool.

Thou seest me lying at the pool;
I would, Thou know’st, I would be whole;
O let the troubled waters move,
And minister Thy healing love.

John Newton also retells this story; 34t GOSPEL POOL has these words: 

Beside the gospel pool,
Appointed for the poor,
From time to time my helpless soul
Has waited for a cure.

But whither can I go?
There is no other pool
Where streams of sov’reign virtue flow
To make a sinner whole.

(Two other related traditional versions of “Beside the Gospel Pool” are this Primitive Baptist version and a version by Lucy M. Outerbridge. Both are well worth a listen.)

But there are other ways to approach illness. One is simply to lament (the first verse of 47b IDUMEA):

And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?

Another is to meditate of the agony of Christ, who “hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4; 1 Peter 2:24), as in the words to 210 LENA (by Joseph Hart):

See the Lord of glory dying!
See Him gasping! hear Him crying!
See His burdened bosom heave!

And yet another is mock our fear, as in Charles Wesley’s 270 CONFIDENCE:

Away, my unbelieving fear;
Fear shall in me no more have place;
My Savior doth not yet appear;
He hides the brightness of His face;

But shall I therefore let Him go,
And basely to the tempter yield?
No, in the strength of Jesus, no!
I never will give up my shield.

We can remind ourselves that we are always within God’s “circling power” (472 AKIN, or 315 IMMENSITY, with words by Isaac Watts).

Within Thy circling pow’r I stand,
On ev’ry side I find Thy hand;
Awake, asleep, at home, abroad,
I am surrounded still with God.

God, in “almighty love” has sworn a “solemn oath” to “shower salvation down,” writes Isaac Watts (to which William Billings set 178t AFRICA), and so:

Why do we then indulge our fears,
Suspicions and complaints?
Is He a God, and shall His grace
Grow weary of His saints? 

And we can remember that our Redeemer lives, as Samuel Medley writes, and will kill death itself (277 ANTIOCH):

He lives to crush the fiends of hell, Glory, hallelujah!
He lives and doth within me dwell, Glory, hallelujah!

Jeremiah asked, “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?” (Jer 8:22), and the spiritual refrain used in 223 BALM IN GILEAD answers in the affirmative:

There’s balm in Gilead
To cure a sin-sick soul;
There’s balm in Gilead
To make the wounded whole.

“There is a Balm in Gilead” is one of the earliest songs recorded; The Fisk Singers recorded it in 1909. The chorus lyrics above are probably from William Glass in his Revivalist songbook.

This is a lot so far! And there are plenty more songs to come. Let me declare this as part 1. More to come, God willing.

Thanks to Stacey Berkheimer, Vella Dailey, Alison Fisher, Judy Getrich, James Harvey, Bill Hogan, John Hutchinson, Sharon Kermiet, Idy Kiser, Luc Kleiner, Emma Korn, Hannah Land, Jesse Latimer, Susan Cherones Lee, Elyllsa Lloyd, Jinx McGuire, Larua McMurray, Brady Santoro, Rowan Simms, Rachel Speer, Caro Stamm-Reusch, John Stoltz, Fynn Titford-Mock, Nancy Vda, Sarah Ward, Mary Jane Wilkie, and Lu Zeng for suggesting songs.