10/09/2026
I just love the story behind Great Is Thy Faithfulness. 💛
It wasn’t written after some big revival or dramatic moment. No spotlight, no crowds, no major crisis. Just the quiet faith of an ordinary man named Thomas Chisholm.
He was born in a little log cabin in Kentucky in 1866. Not exactly a booming metropolis 😂. He didn’t grow up with much, and his health was never strong. He tried different jobs—teacher, editor, even a brief time as a pastor—but illness always seemed to pull him back.
And yet, through all of that, Chisholm kept a journal of God’s faithfulness. He once said, “I must not fail to record here the unfailing faithfulness of a covenant-keeping God.” Isn’t that beautiful?
In 1923, when he was working as a life insurance agent of all things (because God uses everything, y’all), he mailed a few poems to his friend William Runyan, a musician with the Moody Bible Institute.
Runyan was so moved by one of them that he sat down and put it to music. That poem began:
“Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee...”
Runyan said the words just called for a tune. And once it was published, the hymn quietly started spreading.
Decades later, it became a favorite of Billy Graham’s crusades, and today, it’s sung in churches all over the world.
But I think what makes it so special is that it wasn’t born from a mountaintop moment. It came from the slow, steady, day-by-day kind of faith. The kind that sees God show up in ordinary mornings and quiet mercies.
“Morning by morning new mercies I see.”
That line gets me every time. Because it’s true. He is faithful. Not just in the big things—but in the little ones, too.
