I was talking with a friend this morning about songs that run through our heads, and she mentioned the children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me”. I rocked my babies to sleep singing this warm assurance over them as they drifted off on my shoulder many years ago. But sometimes I need to remind myself of these truths as well.

Jesus loves me – Could any statement be more amazing or profound? This God – of incomprehensible glory in brilliant light, Creator of the tiniest parts of the atom as well as ordering billions of stars in flight – He has come. To me and to you, with one simple message: He loves us. Sometimes it is easier to consider His power than it is to accept His love. There is an intimacy in it that we crave and fear at the same time. The child can accept it, but sometimes we adults insist on labeling, quantifying and qualifying it first. Yet this kind of love explodes all of the definitions and explanations we use to try to contain it.

This I know – Do I? Do I really? The great need and desire of my life is to know this more and more every day. It is a knowing that never completes itself, because the miracle of this love is too beautiful to conform itself to boundaries or definitions.

For the Bible tells me so – This book with its never-ending supply of knowledge and mystery communicates God’s heart and character in every page – it is our source. It shouts and it whispers. It comforts and it convicts. Reading it is an adventure.

Little ones to Him belong – Big ones too! We belong.  He gave His life to us and for us so that we could belong to Him. We are sought after, treasured, and secure. We can rest our aching, striving souls here.

They are weak, but He is strong – The world, and even popular Christian culture, tells us that we are strong, we are capable, we are powerful! We can get seduced by this and start to focus on ourselves and our accomplishments. But the way of the cross is humility. It is using the strength we’ve been given (and remember, it has been given) to serve and rescue and help others; not to benefit ourselves or build our platforms or grasp for admiration. He has given us gifts not so that we would make ourselves known, but to make Him known.

So I will sing this song again tonight, but this time I will sing it to myself. I will remind myself that no matter what tomorrow brings, I am secure in this love, in this shelter for my soul, and in this assurance that I belong.

Jesus loves me, this I know;

For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong,

They are weak, but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me!

Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.