This I Know

 Good Morning,

This morning in church we sang an old song.  In fact, without doing a lot of research, I’m going to say it’s VERY old…….. and every one of you could sing along.

A vivid memory I have is seeing Daddy standing in the middle of the living room. At that point he was getting old and a little bit ‘off’ from time to time.  But he had always been rather quiet, and so when he spoke, people listened. Today was no exception.

He got our attention, and with some pause he announced.

“I’ve been thinking………. and I’ve decided that all I know about God is summed up in this one verse, “Jesus Loves Me This I Know’”. 

And with that, just a little while later, he passed away peacefully, with that assurance on his lips and in his heart.

Let me tell you another story related to that simple but powerful song.  Tony and I were short term missionaries in Zambia, as I mentioned last week.  Our ‘main’ job was to establish a student ministry there in our town of Luanshya.  One of the first things we did was to convert our enclosed front porch into a neighbourhood youth centre.

Unfortunately (or so we thought), the only “youth” we seemed to attract were 8-10 yr old boys, who showed up in droves.   It turns out that most of the older boys in the area were off to school day and night, and the girls were either at school or at home helping raise the siblings.  

That being said, we were so blessed with a passel of the sweetest boys you could imagine.  We spent our days playing games, singing songs, going for hikes, and eating just about anything that wasn’t tied down. They were always around. They even tried to teach us the Bemba language, rather unsuccessfully, I’m afraid.  

After two years, our short-term assignment came to a close, and we said goodbye with many tears all around. We returned to the States, got our seminary degree required for career appointment, had a baby, returned to Africa (Liberia this time), nearly died a couple of times then finally settled into Japan for what I thought would be our last missionary assignment.

Boy was I wrong! In the 20+ years that followed, we spent most of it in Japan, with temporary assignments in Hong Kong and Thailand. We lost our precious Trevor to leukemia, found son Nathan and daughter Nicki, moved to Australia and thought, “NOW we’re coming to the final home stretch!”

Can you imagine our surprise and delight when we received a letter one day from our Mission Board in America. They had gotten a letter from Zambia, addressed to “Tony and Marsha, who served in Zambia in 1973”!

The letter read something like this: 

“Dear Mr and Mrs Tony.  When you left we had nothing to do so my friend and I continued to grow up and finished high school. We were bored so we got a group together that we named “The Fighting Boys”. We would drink every weekend, and of course fight.

And then one Sunday morning I was laying in the footpath sleeping because I was so drunk, when someone carefully stepped over me.  He was singing a song I hadn’t heard for years and years.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”.  

I remembered the song from so many years ago, sitting with my friends on your porch. I got up.  Went to the first church I found and gave my life to Jesus.  I wanted my life back that we’d had with you.  My friend also decided it was time to grow up and stop being “The Fighting Boys”.

Now that boy is a pastor in another country and his friend an active deacon in church.  Both have lovely/Godly wives and lots of kids.  Recently the pastor was even able to take one of Tony’s seminary classes thru the wonder of Zoom.

All because of a simple song.

But as we sang it this morning at church, the third verse struck me:

    “I love Jesus does He know?

    Have I ever told him so?

    Jesus wants to hear me say

    That I love him every day”

Definitely words to live by; words for my Daddy, words for little “Fighting Boys” and words for me, never too old to be reminded.

Sing along with me, will you?

Marsha