Both words and music of this hymn were written by Herbert Work, a teacher and concert artist on the saxophone. His wife, Anice, wrote: “Herbert wrote ‘O Shepherd Divine’ while sitting on a large rock in the woods behind St. Helena, California. He always felt he had a marvelous Shepherd to write about. He wanted something a bit more quiet to start the band rehearsal each Tuesday night, and also wanted all who heard it to know what a good Shepherd the band had.” This meditative poem is based on John 10:1–30; verse 16 is echoed in the final stanza, “One staff and one rod, one fold and one God.”

Herbert Archie Work was born June 27, 1904, near Santa Rosa, California. He and his brother attended Lewis School, taught by their mother, and before her, their grandfather Moore. This was a farm family, and Herbert very early learned the value of the “hard work” ethic. He was on the baseball team at Santa Rosa High School and excelled at other sports, but music was his first love. At age 16 he began to make his own living, playing the saxophone and clarinet and making instrumental arrangements that were used on the stage, in concerts, and on the radio by soloists, a symphony orchestra, and dance bands.

Work took four trips as a musician on board ships, once to Australia via Samoa. While playing with a small orchestra on the S.S. Santa Paula (San Francisco, Panama Canal, Philadelphia) in 1932, he read The Marked Bible and The Bible Made Plain. When he disembarked at Philadelphia, he searched out and found the Seventh-day Adventist conference office. He asked the girl at the desk, “Are you a Seventh-day Adventist?” and she answered, “Yes.”

He said, “Well, I have 32 questions to ask you, and if you answer them to my satisfaction I’ll join your church.”

Flustered, she said, “Oh, if you’ll wait 15 minutes, my dad will be back.”

But Work asked, “You are an Adventist, aren’t you?”

“Well, yes, I am,” she said.

“Then you can answer what I want to know,” he returned. Seventeen-year-old Dorothy Vandeman (later Lemon) answered all the questions to his satisfaction. Work left his secular profession and was baptized into the Seventh-day Adventist Church in June 1933.

Work studied for a time at Pacific Union College, St. Helena, California, under Noah Paulin. His long and much-appreciated career included 10 years leading a band at the St. Helena Hospital, and teaching band and choral music at Gem State Academy, Caldwell, Idaho; at Southwestern College, Keene, Texas; and at Modesto Academy, Modesto, California. His concert work on the saxophone led to the production of a recording on the Chapel label; one side held sacred music and the other side secular. At one concert he gave in Glendale, California, scouts were present from a university, looking for talent to travel the U.S. and Canada. They made him a very attractive offer. He loved that kind of work, but he chose to accept a call to teach the young people at Modesto Academy.

In 1954 he published a booklet, Sanctuary Songs, containing 16 items. For his largest work, the cantata Abel, he collaborated with the eldest granddaughter of Ellen G. White, Ella Robinson, who wrote the lyrics, based on Scripture. While at Modesto he composed original background music for the nature pictures of Ernest Booth. In later life, though plagued with emphysema and bronchial asthma, he was still active in helping with the music at the academy near Phoenix, Arizona, and with self-supporting work in Bouse, Arizona; Laurelbrook Academy, Dayton, Tennessee; and Wildwood Institute in Georgia. His fruitful life came to an end back at his beloved St. Helena on December 8, 1982.

His wife, Anice, shares these thoughts about Herbert Work: “Herbert never sat—he was either writing missionary letters or music! Mostly he had his music in his head and just wrote it down, quicker than I can write this—in the car, doctor’s office, bus depots, anywhere and everywhere. Then he’d take it to the piano and correct it. He never thought his talent anything special. He was the most humble man I’ll ever know. After his conversion, he always played as to the Lord. How he loved Him! I’m waiting impatiently for the Lord to come!”