Happy Monday! How blessed I feel I am because I was enrolled in Sunday school at a very young age, therefore, was exposed to eternal truths when I was young. When I learned when I was about four years old that …God is love… (1 John 4:8b), it did not impact me greatly at that time, except that I could recite it. Wow! The first song I remember learning there was “Jesus loves me, this I know.” We all know it is a happy song to sing.
However, when I was nine years old, at the end of my pastor’s sermon, I walked the aisle of my church. Dr. D. D. Sumrall shook my hand and welcomed me into the “family of God.” The truths I had known in my head transferred to my heart upon me receiving Christ as my personal Saviour.
Years came and went; there was schooling, marriage, children, and life! Many times the melody faded, but the truth was always there. There have been mountain tops along the way. There have been deep valleys, but if I stopped to listen, I could hear …God is love… and “Jesus loves me, this I know.”
I have not always felt lovable! You know, there are times when even the dog will not lick your hand. Maybe you are there today. By faith, I still know “Jesus loves me.”
This weekend was a happy time as I went with my daughter Becky and son-in-law Tim to Kingston, Oklahoma, for their granddaughter’s high school graduation—my great granddaughter! (How did this happen?) I am comforted to know that as Bethany leaves her pastor daddy and her sweet mom to go to college, she, along with her generation, can have the same truths that I did—simple, yet so profound.
I am reminded of some of the sanest words I know which were discovered on the walls of an insane asylum in the late 1800s:
“Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.”
What powerful thoughts for life these are! Today, if I were asked, “What is the most profound truth to you?” I would say, “Jesus loves me! This I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
by Beverly Hyles
From the Mondays with Beverly blog. Reprinted with permission.
