Think A Sacred Song
#1006 Hymns—For Home and ChurchLyrics
The Story Behind “Think A Sacred Song”
A substitute Primary teacher heard the children singing, and a song about the power of merely thinking sacred music arrived — words and melody — before she got home.
One Sunday as a Substitute
One Sunday in 2013, Marlene Summers Merkling was substituting in Primary. As the children began to sing, she found herself thinking about how songs plant lessons deeper than talks ever do — and as she had the thought, words and a melody began arriving with it. When she got home from church, she went straight to the piano and wrote them down.
The song she caught that day teaches something quietly radical: you don't have to sing a sacred song out loud for it to work. Just thinking one invites the Spirit — which makes reverence portable, available in a noisy classroom, a hard moment, or the middle of the night.
She Needed Her Own Song
Years later, Merkling proved her own lyric. After heart bypass surgery, she couldn't sleep. 'I would lie awake and think of the words of hymns,' she said, 'which were very comforting to me.' The substitute teacher's song had become her own night nurse.
The doctrine is straight from the Doctrine and Covenants: 'the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me' — and prayers, of course, can be silent.
First Batch, and Conference
'Think a Sacred Song' was released May 30, 2024, as hymn #1006 — in the very first batch of Hymns—For Home and Church. At the release, Elder Isaac K. Morrison highlighted it as a tool for hard moments of choosing between good and bad; that October, the Tabernacle Choir sang it in general conference in a Mack Wilberg arrangement.
Not bad for a song caught on the way home from a substitute-teaching assignment.
Did You Know?
- The song came to Merkling while she was substitute teaching in Primary — she wrote it down at her piano the moment she got home.
- After heart bypass surgery, she used her own song's method — thinking hymn words — to get through sleepless nights.
- The Tabernacle Choir sang it in general conference in October 2024, months after its release.
- Its doctrine is D&C 25:12: 'the song of the righteous is a prayer unto me' — and silent prayers count.
- It has already been translated into 16 languages.
Scripture Connections
- Doctrine and Covenants 25:11–12 — 'The song of the righteous is a prayer unto me' — the verse that makes a thought-song a real prayer.
- John 14:16–18, 27 — The Comforter — 'I will not leave you comfortless' — the companionship the song invites.
- Doctrine and Covenants 8:2 — The Spirit speaks 'in your mind and in your heart' — exactly where a thought-song lives.
Talk About It
Questions to spark a conversation with your family or Primary class:
- Try it right now: think a sacred song all the way through without singing. How do you feel afterward?
- When would thinking a song help you more than singing one out loud?
- Marlene Merkling used hymn words to get through sleepless nights after surgery. What hymn would you keep in your pocket for hard nights?
- Which Primary song is stuck in your heart the deepest? Why do you think that one stayed?
Teaching Resources
Categories
Attribution
Music by: Marlene Summers Merkling, 2013
Text by: Marlene Summers Merkling, 2013
Audio files from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints