While watching a little TV on Sunday instead of going to church, I watched a church in Atlanta honoring one of its senior pastors who had been retired many years. He was 92 at that time and I wondered why the church even bothered to ask the old gentleman to preach at that age.
After a warm welcome, introduction of this speaker, and as the applause quieted down, he rose from his high back chair and walked slowly, with great effort and a sliding gait to the podium. Without a note or written paper of any kind he placed both hands on the pulpit to steady himself and then quietly and slowly he began to speak….
“When I was asked to come here today and talk to you, your pastor asked me to tell you what was the greatest lesson ever learned in my 50-odd years of preaching. I thought about it for a few days and boiled it down to just one thing that made the most difference in my life and sustained me through all my trials… The one thing that I could always rely on when tears and heartbreak and pain and fear and sorrow paralyzed me… the only thing that would comfort was this verse……..
” Jesus loves me this I know.
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong,
we are weak but He is strong…..
Yes, Jesus loves me….
The Bible tells me so..”
