Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling ...

At the beginning of this year, elders were asked to choose their "favorite hymn" and then write a short note as to why it was chosen.  Then at each elder meeting, one of the selections is sung and the song is identified as the favorite of someone.  This was my submission.  We sang it tonight at our meeting and it was an emotional and beautiful time for me.


Well Stormy,  this was a more difficult task than I would have thought.  I’ve put this off for some reason, not wanting to be the first to respond and then just taking time to think about it.  I was convinced that “the most meaningful hymn” to me was not a hymn.  There are many contemporary songs that still tug at my heart much more than those of ‘yesteryear’, but then my heart is different now also.  As I turned through the pages of the blue Great Songs of the Church [this was the one that Paul sanctioned wasn’t it?] ... Page after page I felt the tears well up as different titles flashed back to my early years.  For many of those tunes I can close my eyes and still see A.E. “Polly” Wells as he started the first line and graciously backed away from the pulpit mike into the diffused light of the circular window at the College Church of Christ ... All the time his eyes rolling back in his head.  I always thought he would pass out and fall over backwards, but he never gave me that enjoyment.  With every page there was another memory and if I had to do it over again, I might just as easlily  pick another song, but the one I settled on is Jesus is Tenderly Calling.  I think what made this song special to me was that over the years – while I was still in the far country and sharing corn cobs with the pigs, I would hear this song in the background at a bookstore or in an elevator or in a movie.  I heard it one time being played on an organ in a rural church surrounded by wildflowers in the middle of the summer and then heard it at my grandmother’s church while a small congregation drug this through an acapella graveyard.   But in all these versions ... Jesus kept calling me home.

Two years ago I was invited by Caleb to participate in a class based upon this book.  Ever since then I've had it on my heart that I should teach/conduct this class for some of the men at Highland.  So I finally decided to pull the trigger and squeeze one off - the class begins this coming March 20th and will continue for eight weeks.  I feel terribly inadequate in so many ways, yet know there are many men - young and old - who need to know that they are the beloved son and to come to know the Father in ways that they've never experienced.