The late Rev. George Bennard...
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The late Rev. George Bennard composed "The Old Rugged Cross" in the mid-teens of this century. According to all the polls, that hymn became America's most favorite. He was my visiting preacher and house guest on two occasions in the late 1940s and early '50s. He told me things he had shared with few others, things which had cut and shredded his life when he was a young Methodist pastor in a small Michigan town. His personal tragedy had so crushed him that he fled into hiding. Having "no dwelling place," in this world anymore, he had "no roots." Those were his words. He took refuge in an old borrowed log cabin out in the woods. In his pain and agony, lying flat upon a narrow cot, "(He) ... wrestled with God." In that moment of his great despair, "My eyes saw the cross of Christ clearly before me." That vision was his fresh anointing. "My mind and heart feverishly clung to each other; and my hands reached out determined to embrace that old rugged cross." He went on saying, "I wrapped my arms around myself as if wrapping them around the cross and drawing it tight to me." As those words took form in that remote cabin, George Bennard stood up, all alone, sang the words out loud over and over again. Then he wrote them down, and the music, too, which flowed out from his depths. Thus was born, out of tragedy, the hymn loved by so many thousands; thus also was born "a root ... a dwelling place" for George Bennard. -- Hoornstra
