The story behind the hymn
Thomas Chisholm was a Methodist minister from Kentucky whose health broke early, forcing him out of the pulpit and into a long, quiet life as an insurance agent. He wrote this hymn not out of some single dramatic deliverance but out of the opposite — the steady, unremarkable faithfulness of God across thousands of ordinary days.
Its text is Lamentations 3, written amid the ruins of Jerusalem, where the prophet found bottom: his compassions fail not; they are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. Chisholm adds the turning seasons and the moving stars as further witnesses: summer and winter, and springtime and harvest, sun, moon and stars in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness.
The hymn traveled slowly, then everywhere — carried by the singer George Beverly Shea and the Moody Bible Institute, and adopted as a kind of unofficial anthem of steadfastness. Its refrain is the believer's daily arithmetic: morning by morning new mercies I see; all I have needed Thy hand hath provided — great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.
The lyrics
Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father,There is no shadow of turning with Thee;Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
Refrain
Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!Morning by morning new mercies I see;All I have needed Thy hand hath provided —Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!
Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,Join with all nature in manifold witnessTo Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth,Thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide;Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
Public domain. Free to sing, copy, print, and share.
The Scripture behind it
It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
New every morning: great is thy faithfulness — the verse the whole hymn expounds.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
No variableness, neither shadow of turning — the first stanza's second line.