Pineridge Blog

“I love to tell the story of Jesus and his love.”

I was just listening to this old hymn as sung by my favorite new gospel quartet, Acapeldridge.  You can hear for yourself at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYm2VgBWe80

If you look up some of the other songs by this group on YouTube you will see that it is actually the same guy singing all four parts!  I guess he sings each part and then cuts and pastes them together through some fancy technology.  His name is Michael Eldridge, and he grew up in Indiana loving to sing old hymns.

In 1866 English evangelist, Katherine Hankey, became very sick while in Africa.  During her long convalescence she wrote this familiar hymn.  This is a song born of hope during serious illness.  Imagine all of the places this has been sung in the past 150 years.  It first came to the U.S. as the nation was recovering from the Civil War.  Its simple assurance has offered hope through World Wars, pandemics and uncertainty for generations.

I’m finding that this hymn is a theme song of this moment for me.  Certainly it is a time of anxiety and fear in so many ways.  Suffering from the virus is compounded by the pain of an uncertain future.  In a very real way the vaccine can’t come soon enough, because it seems the only true cure for the virus and it’s devastating economic and cultural effects.

However, I have to admit that this is also an exciting time in many ways.  I have an odd sense of joy at being alive at this moment when everything is off balance.  It is different than any we have ever known, but it no doubt harkens back to plagues and pandemics our ancestors faced in their time.  We are here because we are descendants of survivors.  There is strength and encouragement in that.  Which means also that we owe it to future generations to persist in caring for one another and ourselves now.  In other words, it really seems to be another moment in history when the church is simply called to be the church, to tell again the old, old story of Jesus and his love and to show his love to those who need it most right now.