How new hymn ‘Speak to Us, Lord’ turned one man’s heart to his grandfather

J. Scott Miller spent hours leafing through a book of his grandfather’s poems when a four-word title stood out to him:

“Speak To Me, Lord.”

The book — a family keepsake — compiled almost 900 poems his grandfather James Miller had written or edited.

“As I was going through, this one just jumped out at me,” Scott Miller said, adding that he thought it would make a great hymn.

Over the next few weeks, Miller edited the poem, changing words like “me” to “us” and adding a repeating chorus:

“Speak to us, Lord; fill our souls with Thy music!

Strengthen us, Lord, in the trials we face.

Bless us, O Lord, to walk humbly beside Thee,

To feel of Thy love and Thy infinite grace."

He recalled the time he spent reworking the hymn, saying it felt like “a combination of my grandfather and me working on the same poem.”

That was 17 years ago.

Bridging the generations

After submitting the edited poem to the Church as a suggestion for a new hymn, Miller discovered that his grandfather’s piece was actually an adaptation of an original poem in 1912 by Gertrude Watson.

Growing up with little education as a farmer, James Miller hardly had time to learn. He began writing poetry in the 1950s. At that time, a common practice for learning writing techniques included rewriting poetry that one liked and changing a few words or editing the style — an explanation as to why the poem J. Scott Miller read closely mirrored Watson’s original.

“I think he found that poetry was a form of entertainment, solace, comfort and inspiration,” said Scott Miller. “He wanted to share some of the things he’d learned over his life with others.”

James Miller was no stranger to needing solace, comfort and inspiration. In 1947, his 29-year-old daughter died from an illness, leaving behind three young children. About 10 years later, his wife, suffering from heart complications, also passed away.

“I realized his daily life involved worrying about his loved ones and caring for them and trying to do what he could to comfort them and to find comfort,” recalled J. Scott Miller, “because it was such a tragic thing to watch loved ones die.”

Looking again at the words of the poem, Miller saw his grandfather’s plea for God’s daily intervention in his life. The essence of the poem, he said, is a prayer for God to “speak to me through all the phases of life.”

Each verse, he learned, can reflect the young, middle-age and elderly stages of life. His grandfather, in each phase of his life, had “a particular way of asking for help from God and having God speak in comfort or restoration,” Miller said.

His grandfather changed the lines “lest in stress of temptations/ the world and its baubles my soul shall enthrall” to “lest in stress of endeavor/the world and its troubles my soul shall enthrall.”

“What I learned about him from that is that his own struggles in life were less about the temptations of materialism and more about the struggles and troubles that came from making a living and supporting a family throughout the Depression and his family tragedies,” recalled Miller.

“That’s what’s beautiful about poetry and music and literature, all kinds of the arts — they show human beings in their depths and in their heights of joy in their lives,” he said. “I was able to understand [my grandfather] better because of it. The communication, though not perfect — very imperfect — still allows us to understand other people, which is what Christ wants us to do while we’re living here.”

Finishing his grandfather’s work

Miller wanted to continue reworking the poem — but couldn’t. Back in 2009, he was the chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages at Brigham Young University and in 2015 became the dean of the College of Humanities, leaving little time to work on the hymn.

But in 2018, the Church announced an open call for hymn submissions for what is known today as Hymns for Home and Church — a new batch of songs to be used throughout the Church.

“When it was announced, I thought I had to go back and find those poems of my grandfather’s, the poem that I’ve worked on,” Miller said.

He went through another editing process for about a week. Throughout that time, a traditional Spanish Christmas hymn was playing in the back of his head, one that seemed to fit the meter of the poem perfectly.

“As I was working on it, I was singing the song in the back of my mind so that I could come up with lyrics that would match it,” he said.

One month before the deadline, Miller submitted his final version.

Today, 17 years after Miller found his grandfather’s poem, it is known as hymn No. 1069: Speak To Us, Lord. Lex de Azevedo, a Church-commissioned composer, created the music now used with the hymn.

Recalling his process editing and submitting the new hymn, Miller said, “I think it’s an example of how God can speak to us.

“God speaks to us, and then when He does, if we listen and if we’re open to that, it transforms our lives in miraculous ways,” he said. “When God speaks to us, the Old Testament God, the speaking is often crying, calling us unto repentance and so on. But the God of love that we worship in prayer — the God that Joseph sought in the grove — when He speaks to us, He fills our souls with knowledge and light.”