February 26, 2024 - Good Morning! It's Monday, February 26.
One of the regular features of our Sunday morning worship service here at First Baptist Center is the Children's Sermon. It's always a joy to see the kids hurrying toward the stage to join our children's minister for their special time. And, as they come, I usually play a special song, This is the story behind that song.
Sisters Anna and Susan Warner never married, living together during the latter half of the 19th century. They supported themselves by writing novels - more than a hundred between them. In 1860, Susan had a bestseller titled "Say and Seal". There was a scene in the book where a very sick boy was visited by his Sunday School teacher. The child, as he lay dying, asked his teacher to sing a song, and the man sang these words -
Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so
Little ones to Him belong, they are weak, but He is strong
The scene, of course, was fiction. There was no little boy, no Sunday School teacher. There was no song. But the publisher was so taken by the lyrics, that he approached the great gospel hymn writer, William Bradbury, to compose a tune. The new song became hugely popular all across America.
And now for the rest of the story.
When missionaries went to exotic China - missionaries like a woman named Lottie Moon - they took this little song with them. It quickly became the favorite hymn of that vast, mysterious country. Today we call this tune "China". In an interesting side note, Bradbury's melody uses the pentatonic scale, just five notes. Most of our music today uses a seven-note scale (Do-Re-Mi). The pentatonic scale is seen mainly in folk songs and in blues music. Oh, and by the way, it's the foundation for the music... of China. Written by an American composer, "Jesus Loves Me" must have seemed, to the children of China, like it was written just for them. And, of course, it was. God works in mysterious ways!
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
