Father, I Stretch My Hands To Thee

The Oak Ridge Boys' “Father, I Stretch My Hands To Thee” opens with a verse from Charles Wesley's hymn. The singer stretches out his hands to God and says he has no other hand to lean on. If God were to withdraw himself, he asks, where else could he possibly go.

The song then moves to the cross. Jesus bore it alone, and all the world went free. Each believer is told that there is a cross for everyone, and the singer says he knows there is one for him. The last section turns into a testimony in plain language. It was Jesus who made him whole and Jesus who saved his soul, who picked him up, turned him around and put his feet on solid ground. The stripped-down southern gospel arrangement lets the four-part harmony carry the words, and the mixture of an old hymn with an easy, singable testimony makes the song feel familiar from the first line. It fits a quiet moment in a service, a prayer for someone who has run out of their own strength or a gathering around a piano. The combination of surrender and rescue is the center of the song, and it ends by naming the one who did the work. The singer takes up his own cross only because Jesus first carried the heavier one.

Taking up a cross daily is Luke 9:23. Wounds that heal us are Isaiah 53:5, and being lifted out of the pit is Psalm 40:2.