Lyrics
When the storms of life are raging, stand by me;
When the storms of life are raging, stand by me;
When the world is tossing me like a ship upon the sea,
Thou who rulest the wind and water, stand by me.
In the midst of tribulation, stand by me;
In the midst of tribulation, stand by me;
When the host of hell assail, and my strength begins to fail,
Thou who never lost a battle, stand by me.
In the midst of faults and failures, stand by me;
In the midst of faults and failures, stand by me;
When I've done the best I can, and my friends misunderstand,
Thou who knowest all about me, stand by me.
In the midst of persecution, stand by me;
In the midst of persecution, stand by me;
When my foes in war array undertake to stop my way,
Thou who rescued Paul and Silas, stand by me.
When I'm growing old and feeble, stand by me;
When I'm growing old and feeble, stand by me;
When my life becomes a burden, and I'm nearing chilly Jordan,
O Thou Lily of the Valley, stand by me.
Public domain hymn text and tune (published 1905). Words and music by Charles Albert Tindley. Not to be confused with the later, unrelated secular song of the same title.
The Story Behind the Hymn
Charles Albert Tindley published "Stand By Me" in 1905 in his own collection, New Songs of Paradise, No. 6, during the same fertile stretch of hymn writing that also produced "We'll Understand It Better By and By" and "Nothing Between." By this point Tindley, born to an enslaved father in Maryland and self-taught in reading and theology, was well established as pastor of the Philadelphia congregation he had once served as its janitor.
The hymn opens with a direct echo of the Gospel accounts in which Christ calms a storm on the Sea of Galilee, rebuking the wind and the waves — an image Tindley's congregation, many of them living through real economic and social storms of their own in early twentieth-century urban America, would have felt as more than a distant Bible story. Each verse names a different form of hardship — tribulation, personal failure, persecution, the frailty of old age — and answers every one with the same plain, repeated request, addressed directly to Christ: stand by me.
The reference to "Thou who rescued Paul and Silas" in the fourth verse draws on Acts 16, where the two apostles are freed from prison in the middle of the night — a story of unjust suffering met by divine deliverance that would have resonated deeply within Tindley's community.
Though it shares its title with a much later, unrelated secular song, Tindley's "Stand By Me" predates it by more than half a century and belongs to an entirely different tradition — one of the several dozen hymns through which Tindley, often called the father of American gospel music, gave lasting voice to the struggles of the congregation he had risen from within to lead.
