Jesus Loves Me

   Words. Just words. String them together to make a rhyme. She could do that.

   Anna sighed, rested her elbow on the desk and her forehead in the palm of her hand. Surely the words to a simple poem should not be so difficult to create. She tapped the desktop with the idle tip of her pen, then caught her bottom lip between her teeth and hastily scrawled a few lines onto the waiting parchment before her. She paused after a stanza and read them over again. They were lovely. Too lovely. They would never do.


   Anna caught up the paper on the impulse to crumble it in her hands and send it flying into the waste basket. But no, paper was not to be wasted, so she gently smoothed it out on her desk, sat up a little straighter and smoothed back loose strands of her dark hair. She took a deep breath scented of ink, dust, and a subtle sweet perfume lingering in the folds of her dress. Surely, she could come up with something.

   Her gaze wandered from the confines of her room to the window and the clear sky beyond. A melody of sweet notes chirped from the branch of a tree nearby. Anna thought of how she used to whistle back at the little songbirds when she was a girl. Forty-years-old was no longer a child, but her lips wanted to, so she let them. The sound brought back memories of when she had first set foot on Constitution Island.

   It was 1837, the year she turned ten, and a sudden depression had snatched away her father’s fortune and forced him to give up his career as a successful New York lawyer. With the hope of a more promising future, the family had moved from the city to take up permanent residence in their summer home – which happened to be within walking distance of the United States Military Academy on West Point. At that time, her eighteen-year-old sister Susan began attempting to use her gift of writing to earn an income. Anna chuckled reminiscently as she recalled the day she first discovered a publisher’s letter tucked inside the family’s mail.

   "Susan! Susan, come quick!" She burst in through the door in an excited flurry, strands of loose hair tumbling from beneath her hat.

  Susan swept gracefully into the entry. "I certainly hope you haven’t ripped the seam of your new dress again.” Anna’s cheeks flushed at the rebuke. She wasn’t certain if she would ever grow used to dressing in the ankle-length skirts of a young woman. “Have you gone mad?” Susan’s eyebrows arched in disapproval.

   "Oh, Susan," she thrust the letter into Susan's bewildered hands, “read it quick or I might.” Susan dropped her gaze to scan the return address printed neatly on the envelope.

   “It’s the publishing house I sent in to,” she breathed. She slit the envelope open and read the letter inside. Anna bounced impatiently on the balls of her feet and clasped her hands expectantly. A gasp escaped Susan's ladylike composure.

   "They've accepted it," she exclaimed breathlessly.

   "I knew it!" Anna burst into a jubilant laugh and fairly danced in place.

   "Susan Lothrop," Susan rolled the pen name around her tongue. “Author.”

   The publishing of Susan’s first book thrust a ray of sunshine into the sisters’ lives that never really dimmed no matter how many books were to be published after it. It wasn’t long after that Anna stepped in to share the pen name of Lothrop and beginning writing alongside her sister. Their writing not only provided an assistance in income, but became a love and passion of both young women.

   Now, Anna cast a rueful glance at her empty paper. She and Susan's latest literary work was nearly finished but for the small poem awaiting creation by her pen. Within the pages of their story, a small boy lay dying. In his last few hours of life, this poem was to be recited in an effort to bring peace to his young heart. What was it, she wondered, that would bring the most comfort to a small child as he waited for death to take him?

   The bird’s song had faded and was now replaced by something thrumming and distant. The cadets on West Point were marching through drills and the steady beat of a drummer boy’s rhythm floated gently on the breeze. The sound sent a sharp twinge through Anna’s heart. She thought of the young cadets that lived and trained at the academy, now drilling up and down the green in formation with rifles rested against their shoulders. Since she and Susan had begun their small Bible class every Sunday at the West Point academy, the soldiers in training had grown especially dear to her heart.

   Threat of the southern states’ separation from the Union hung darkly over their heads. If such a betrayal occurred then war was doomed to follow. Every young life drilling now on the academy grounds would be pulled to the battlefront - some never to return. Anna felt the weight of these thoughts almost constantly. Every time she heard the explosion of a rifle or the solemn beat of a drummer boy’s march, she thought of her young cadets. Many of them hadn’t even reached the age of twenty. Such lives were too young to be snuffed out like the flame of an unwanted candle. What was it that they would want to hear - that she would want to tell them - if she were near their sides in one final moment of life?

   Then she knew.

   No man or child needed anything eloquent, lovely, or profound as they slipped through the curtain of death. All they needed was the simplest comfort that their Maker would be waiting.

   Anna bent over her desk with sudden inspiration, her pen scratching effortlessly along the paper. She poured her talent and passion into the humble verses. Every word was a prayer, a whisper of love from her heart. Her pen ceased in its fervor and she read the verses over again. They were simple, so simple. But they were beautiful in their own way.  In them was the devotion of an ordinary woman who wanted only to serve her King and the children He loved, and that made them enough.

   Anna let out a deep breath, then sank to her knees on the floor in a short, whispered prayer of blessing over her small poem. A shaft of golden sunlight gleamed on her soft strands of hair and spilled over the parchment and words of ink still wet.

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—loves me still,
Though I'm very weak and ill;
From his shining throne on high,
Comes to watch me where I lie.

Jesus loves me—he will stay,
Close beside me all the way.
Then his little child will take,
Up to heaven for his dear sake

  
   She stood from her prayer and cast a last smile at the little poem. Even if her words were to touch but one heart, for Anna, it would be more than enough.

-

   Although enlivened with a dash of imagination, the story you just read is based on actual events in the life of song and story writer, Anna B. Warner. Anna's poem was later published in the novel Say and Seal written by both she and her sister Susan - the novel growing to become one of America's best-selling works of fiction. Shortly after the beginning of the Civil War, a music teacher and composer, William Bradbury, discovered her work of poetry and fell in love with the simple yet beautiful lines. He would later alter a few of the verses, add the refrain of ‘Yes, Jesus loves me’, and set Anna's words to music. Bradbury's music company agreed to publish the children's song, introducing Anna's poem as one of the most well-loved songs in America during one of the country's most painful times in history. As the Civil War raged, both the Union and Confederate grew to know and love the simple verses of Jesus Loves Me.

   The novel Say and Seal has grown unfamiliar, while both Anna B. Warner and William Bradbury are now dim pictures of the past. However, the song Jesus Loves Me has survived generations of children who know every word by heart. The truth that ‘Jesus loves me’ once shook the earth at His death on the cross. Anna Warner believed that truth, and her faith lives on to remind even the youngest heart that Jesus truly, undeservingly, and forever loves me.