A worker bee flies from flower to flower as she works to ensure the survival of the hive. After its brief life span of eight weeks, it flies away – never to be seen again.
This fact may have crossed the mind of Albert Brumley as he worked the rows of cotton on his father’s Oklahoma farm. As he did, he often hummed a line from “The Prisoner’s Song.”
“If I had the wings of an angel, over these prison walls I would fly.”
Years later in 1929, Brumley wrote “I’ll Fly Away,” a song which became the most recorded gospel song of all time.
The song speaks to everyone; it is at once melancholy and hopeful; that while our lives are difficult, there is also reason to celebrate life after death.
“Just a few more weary days and then,
I’ll fly away;
To a land where joy shall never end,
I’ll fly away.”
As a reminder to all of us, the meaning of these three words appear at the end of Psalm 90:10.
“Seventy years are given to us. Some even live to eighty. But even the best years are filled with pain and trouble; soon they disappear, and we fly away.”
Before we fly away, we have today.
When I die, Hallelujah, by and by
I’ll fly away