Behold the Wounds in Jesus’ Hands

This hymn was written by two men who spent years singing other people's hymns. John V. Pearson (1951–2010) wrote hundreds of hymn texts, served thirty years as a military officer, and sang in the Tabernacle Choir — his obituary remembered him as one of the finest hymn text writers of his generation. David R. Naylor (1958–2020) was a Utah music teacher who taught in the public schools of Fillmore and Tooele, published nearly a hundred musical works, and sang in the Tabernacle Choir as well.

Pearson wrote the text in 1997; Naylor set it to music the following year, and in 1998 the hymn entered the Church's music submission program — the same channel through which thousands of members offer their songs to the Church. Most submissions are never heard again. This one became one of the most beloved Latter-day Saint hymns of its generation.

The hymn dwells on a tender question: why does the resurrected, perfected Savior still carry the marks of the nails? Scripture answers with invitation. 'Behold the wounds which pierced my side, and also the prints of the nails in my hands and feet,' the Lord says in the Doctrine and Covenants; in 3 Nephi, twenty-five hundred people feel those prints one by one until every one had witnessed for themselves.

The hymn's most striking idea turns the Crucifixion's instruments inside out: the carpenter from Nazareth took wood and nails — the very tools used against Him — and with them built His people an eternal home, echoing His promise that 'in my Father's house are many mansions... I go to prepare a place for you.'

The hymn's rise was slow and steady. A BYU combined choir sang it in general conference in April 2000. Jackman Music published it, and it became one of the publisher's most beloved choral works — a staple of ward and stake choirs across the Church for two decades. The Church printed it in the Ensign in 2009, and a BYU choir brought it back to general conference in October 2021.

By the time the new hymnbook project began collecting suggestions, a generation of Latter-day Saints had sung it on Easter Sundays and at sacrament meetings — everywhere except from the hymnbook itself.

John Pearson died in 2010. David Naylor died in 2020. On September 12, 2024, their hymn was released as #1016 in Hymns—For Home and Church, in the same batch as 'Amazing Grace' — the first time either man's name appeared in an official Latter-day Saint hymnbook, and neither was alive to see it.

Congregations knew exactly what to do with it. Within months, wards across the Church had adopted it — overwhelmingly choosing it as a sacrament hymn, sung in the very meeting where members do each week what the hymn asks: remember the wounds, and the love that bore them.