Anyone could say this. Could that be why this particular
song – “He Loves Me” – has no recognized composer? He was just a believer, one among
the countless who wanted to say something about the love of his life. But, he
did more than just declare how the Almighty felt about him. He asks lots of
questions, as if his was a guarded response to God’s gift initially. After all,
could it be credible for anyone to love to the degree that He did? Was it these questions that leapt off the page
for Anthony Showalter, when he picked this one for a worship songbook he
published in 1898?
Whether 40-year old Anthony Johnson Showalter may have known
the writer of “He Love Me” as the 19th Century came to a close is
unknown, but he knew good music when he saw it. Showalter was himself a musical
composer, and had produced many collections of hymns by the time he spotted
this love song. His 130 productions spanned more than two decades in the late
19th and early 20th Centuries. It was in Dalton, Georgia
where Showalter published the second volume of his Song Land Messenger, which
includes “He Loves Me”. Showalter was
known all over the South for his musical enterprising in teaching, composing,
and publishing, so he must have had a plethora of contacts who floated ideas,
like new songs, his way. Perhaps this mysterious composer was also a
Southerner, or maybe it was large number of folks who developed the song’s
words, to which Showalter or some other capable musician contributed the tune. Lots
of questions were on the mind of this poet, as he or she puzzled over God’s
selfless behavior.
Why did He leave home? What compelled Him to reach out to people
wary of His true identity? How could He endure the lures of this world? And,
most bewildering, why was He apparently bent on a martyr’s cause? The answer:
LOVE. There’s a musical I take part in this Easter weekend that sums up His looming,
yet providential destiny. He had the secret answer, but He had no desire to
keep it hush-hush. He made death turn upon itself, He, the creator of life. That’s
what Jesus knew, what He came to do. This universal guiding principle isn’t
just another ‘silly love song’, as a well-known secular composer (Paul McCartney)
has written. It’s not a cute, fuzzy, bunny rabbit you cuddle this Easter. No,
as Philip Yancey has written, the Christ’s Easter is blood-stained, but with
overpowering hope. “…then human history becomes the contradiction and Easter a
preview of ultimate reality. Hope then flows like lava beneath the crust of
daily life.” Maybe that’s what the anonymous
composer discovered -- he couldn’t resist the draw of the love God implemented.
Love is powerful, even by human standards. But, try God’s love-standard…it
might knock you over, but it also lifts you to a place you’ll never go
otherwise.
See also Philip Yancey’s “The Jesus I Never Knew” Zondervan
Publishing House, 1995, p. 220.
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