Jesus Loves Me - Anna Warner + Susan Warner

1827–1915 1819–85

In World War II, an American PT boat was destroyed in the Pacific. The crew, including future president John F. Kennedy, was rescued by natives of the nearby Solomon Islands. On the boat ride to safety, they sang a song they all knew—Americans and islanders alike—“Jesus Loves Me.”

It is possibly the best-known Christian song ever, written around 1860 by a novelist named Anna Warner. She and her sister, Susan, lived a riches-to-rags story in which both had to become writers to pay the bills.

They had grown up in a wealthy home in New York City, but their father lost a bundle in the financial “Panic of 1837.” The family gave up their city mansion for their country home upstate, on an island in the Hudson River. Eventually the sisters began writing novels, and they turned out to be pretty good at it. Susan often used the pen name “Elizabeth Wetherell” while Anna wrote as “Amy Lothrop.” Between them, they churned out more than fifty novels.

At some point in their family’s upheaval, both sisters became serious Christians. This came through not only in their writing, which tended to be strongly moral and didactic, but also in their personal lives. They began holding Bible studies for the cadets at West Point, which was just across the river from their home.

“Jesus Loves Me” first appeared in the 1860 novel Say and Seal. Anna wrote the lyrics at Susan’s request. In the deeply emotional story, a young boy on his deathbed asks for a song from one of the people comforting him. The man picks up the boy and walks gently around the room with him. Softly, “his tone . . . almost as low as his footsteps,” the man sings the song we have come to know. (Of course, at that point they were still just words on a page, but composer William B. Bradbury soon created the tune.)

It is a children’s song that packs a powerful message for everyone. We are weak, he is strong, and yet Jesus loves each one of us. Let that little tune—and its great message—waft through your mind today.

God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16