Introduction

Biography

Williams moved to Bri­tain af­ter her mar­riage in 1969. How­ev­er, her love of hymns be­gan ma­ny years be­fore (the in­ci­dent with her Bi­ble, be­low, re­minds us of Zech­a­riah 3:2’s brand plucked out of the fire):

In 1956, while Rus­sian troops were fight­ing the up­ris­ing in Bu­da­pest, ca­pi­tal of Hun­ga­ry, I was safe about a hun­dred miles away in a stat­ely home turned into a san­a­tor­i­um for child­ren with heart com­plaints.

While laid low with the ’flu for about a week dur­ing that long au­tumn—we could not re­turn home be­cause of the fight­ing—I spent some hap­py days go­ing through my Hun­gar­i­an hymn book com­pris­ing about 620 hymns, mark­ing all the ones I knew or thought I knew. I still have that hymn book to­day, com­plete with all the mark­ings. While bu­sy do­ing this, one of the girls stuffed my Bi­ble in the stove—for­tu­nate­ly, the fire had gone out and I was able to dust off the ash­es. I still use that Bi­ble today.

My in­ter­est in hymns grew ev­en more af­ter I had come to faith at the age of 15. I find that, apart from the tre­men­dous en­cour­age­ment, com­fort and joy that hymns with a good Bib­li­cal con­tent give, they al­so act ra­ther like vi­ta­mins—help­ing you build God’s Word in­to your life. Al­so, I have ex­pe­ri­enced again and again, with am­aze­ment, how God’s Spi­rit does bring them to mind, just the right one at the right time. What a he­ri­tage—and what a bless­ing!

Anna Williams, 2008