Lyrics
In shady, green pastures,
So rich and so sweet,
God leads His dear children along;
Where the water's cool flow
Bathes the weary one's feet,
God leads His dear children along.
Some through the waters,
Some through the flood,
Some through the fire,
But all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow,
But God gives a song,
In the night season
And all the day long.
Sometimes on the mount
Where the sun shines so bright,
God leads His dear children along;
Sometimes in the valley,
In darkest of night,
God leads His dear children along.
Though sorrows befall us
And evils oppose,
God leads His dear children along;
Through grace we can conquer,
Defeat all our foes,
God leads His dear children along.
Away from the mire,
And away from the clay,
God leads His dear children along;
Away up in glory, eternity's day,
God leads His dear children along.
Public domain hymn text and tune (copyrighted 1903), based on John 10:3.
The Story Behind the Hymn
George A. Young wrote both the words and music of "God Leads Us Along" in 1903. Young was, by trade, a carpenter who also preached the gospel, laboring in relative obscurity through small rural communities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — not a professional musician or a well-known evangelist, but a working man whose faith found expression in a handful of hymns.
The hymn came directly out of tragedy. After years of sacrifice, Young and his wife finally built a small house of their own. While he was away holding meetings in another community, hostile opponents of his preaching burned the house to the ground. Out of that loss, and reflecting on Job 35:10 — which asks where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night — Young wrote this hymn, built around the idea that God's leading continues through mountain and valley, sorrow and mire alike.
The hymn's later history adds an unexpected coda. Around 1942, nearly forty years after it was written, the hymn compiler Haldor Lillenas set out to track down Young's widow. He found her address in a small town, and a gas station attendant along the way told him it belonged to the county poor house. There he found Mrs. Young, elderly and living in surroundings far from comfortable, yet radiating what Lillenas described as the joy of the Lord. She told him God had led her there, glad for the chance to introduce her fellow residents to Jesus — still testifying, in old age and poverty, to the very hymn her husband had written decades before.
That encounter gives the refrain — "some through great sorrow, but God gives a song" — a weight beyond the words on the page: a hymn written after a house fire, still being lived out by its author's widow in a poor house four decades later.
