Yesterday during worship at church, we sang Jesus Loves Me. It was interesting to feel how deep the lyrics felt in the sanctuary, even though in our culture it is "just a kid's song". But it really is more than that. It has many more stanzas. The number of stanzas and the words of those stanzas can change slightly, depending where you look, but they are full of theological truth. I have often sang some of the other stanzas to my children. I really think music is a great way to transmit theological truth. There are so many scriptures I know because they are part of a song. Our kids have scripture tucked away in their hearts and don't even know it yet. Like..."the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Imagine music notes where I have quotation marks).
I love knowing the history around hymns, especially older ones. This curiosity was piqued when I was in high school and our pastor spoke a series of messages about the origination of some of the most popular hymns, including Jesus Loves Me. We often would sing all the stanzas of this song on Sunday evening services.
Here is a snippet of history about this song:
It was originally written by Anna Warner. Anna and her sister, Susan, wrote for different literary publications to support their family in the early 1800's. The song was part of a novel about a little boy who was dying. In the novel, called Say and Seal, his Sunday school teacher wrote the song for the boy to bring him comfort. The book was the second best-seller of its time, second only to Uncle Tom's Cabin. For 40 years, the women taught Bible classes for the cadets at West Point. To this day, they are the only civilians to be buried in the military cemetery at West Point, and with full military honors. Their home is maintained by West Point as a museum to their memory (Information has been taken from Then Sings My Soul by Robert J. Morgan).
It is amazing that their lives held such a tremendous amount of legacy, aside from the simple tune that children sing.
This is the original version of the lyrics, just in case you are interested.
Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong, They are weak, but He is strong.
Jesus loves me! He who died, Heaven's gates to open wide;
He will wash away my sin, Let his little child come in.
Jesus take this heart of mine, Make it pure and wholly Thine;
Thou has bled and died for me, I will hence-forth live for Thee.
Jesus loves me! He will stay, Close beside me all the way;
He's prepared a home for me, And someday His face I'll see.
Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me,
The Bible tells me so.
2 comments:
Probably my favorite hymn and behind the scene look is It is well with my soul. I love the song and story and even did an arranging project around it in college.
Megan
Yes, I agree Megan. That was one of the hymns that was part of the message series when I was a teenager and is also in the "Then Sings My Soul" book. I always think, if he can write those words, after going through what he did, than I can surely sing them in my trials!
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