First Music Lesson

I learned to sing in the backseat of a '55 Plymouth.  Shortly before his death, my father bought the car.  It was his first new one.  All the other ones had been used by someone else.  This was the car that took us back to Waycross, Georgia after his death and the one my mother drove forever while my sister and me grew up in the backseat.  It was in that car that I learned my first church songs.  I do not remember exactly how it happened except that when we went somewhere my mother would sing and so we all sang.  The backseat of that '55 Plymouth became like a choir loft where my mother led her choir.

 

One of the earliest songs I remember singing was an old gospel song, "Love Lifted Me."  It was not a song which made it to the official Methodist hymnal, but one we sang from "The Cokesbury Hymnal" which was the preferred song book of the Methodist I knew growing up. While I can still sing all the three verses, it is that first verse which is imbedded in an unforgettable way in my heart.  "I was sinking deep in sin, far from the peaceful shore, Very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more; But the Master of the sea heard my despairing cry, From the waters lifted me, now safe am I."  And then came the chorus which simply repeated three lines twice, "Love lifted Me!  Love lifted me!  When nothing else could help, Love lifted me."

Who can measure the power of music about the work of Jesus in a sinner's heart?  Who can measure how the songs of our youth shape our souls for a lifetime of living?  The one problem I have with the contemporary church movement is the trendy contemporary music which is sung today and replaced tomorrow by the next best selling song.  A song like "Love Lifted Me" was written in 1912 and was sung by generations of growing believers.  How thankful I am for those early music lessons in the backseat of that '55 Plymouth.