Power of a Song

Her name was Alice Barbara. Not Alice or Barbara, but Alice Barbara (maybe two words or just one, I don’t know). She wore ruby red lipstick and nail polish to match. She also sported corsages or glittery brooches on her taffeta dresses sometimes. Though I figured she was pretty old, her hair was jet black, and I could tell that she penciled in her eyebrows and caked her cheeks with deep pink rouge. And she was beautiful to me.

  She played the old upright piano in my 8-year-old Sunday school room every week at the same time. I was told that she played “by ear” and that she couldn’t read music at all. But she could play that out-of-tune clunker with such joy and precision that I wanted to be like her. I kinda wanted to be her. I could play the piano some at a young age, especially if I had the music pages in front of me, but nothing like Alice Barbara.

When I was a teenager, after Alice Barbara passed away, I was asked to play for that same 8-year-old class Sunday school singing time, but I had to have the hymnal or a songbook in front of me. I couldn’t make my hands flow across the keys like Alice Barbara. But I remember to this day some of the songs we would sing. One, I think of every Sunday morning. The lyrics go:

Sunday morning clear and cool

I meet my friends at Sunday school.

Friends of mine, are friends of Jesus

He’s a friend to me.

Sunday morning rain or shine

I always meet these friends of mine.

Friends of mine, are friends of Jesus

He’s a friend to me.

Of course, there were other favorites like “Jesus Loves Me” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children” and “Heavenly Sunlight” that I learned and loved and cherish today.

Here’s another:

In the temple, in the temple
Stood a happy boy one day,
And the doctors wondered greatly
At the words they heard Him say.

Refrain:
It was Jesus! It was Jesus!
Standing in the temple there
But the light of heav’n was shining
In His face so pure and fair.

I don’t know if anybody else remembers Miss Alice Barbara and the songs we sang, but I certainly do. The images and the sounds I absorbed at a young age at her elbow are still with me today. Maybe my theology isn’t built around some of these songs. I mean, “I’ve got a home in glory land that outshines the sun…” “Way beyond the blue…” isn’t fodder for deep spiritual discernment. It is, however, a lesson to me in how music and scripture and ladies at the upright can impress and mold a child and bring Jesus to mind decades later.

Never underestimate the power of a song and scriptural teaching that a grownup can access from a memory as a childhood experience at church. In fact, those can be the building blocks of a heart that is surrendered to the Lord.

What are some songs you sang in church as a child that have remained in your heart and mind through the years? Have they deepened your faith? Do they still resonate with you today? You can respond in the comments.