Jesus Loves Me as I Wash My Hands [T, 5-2-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—Jesus Loves Me as I Wash My Hands [T, 5-2-23]

 

I never paid attention to how long I washed my hands; I just washed them. Then covid19 hit, and we were instructed to wash for at least 20 seconds. There were no vaccinations yet. Masks were scarce. Washing hands was our best, and sometimes only, protection. I started taking hand washing seriously.

I learned that singing “Jesus Loves Me,” at a slightly slower pace than usual, took exactly 20 seconds. I still sing “Jesus Loves Me” every time I wash my hands. It seems right.

It also reminds me of being in Childrens’ Hospital at the University of Iowa with grandson Joe, 175 miles away from where we lived then.

He was diagnosed with hepatoblastoma [liver cancer] when he was 15 months old. He spent most of the next year in the hospital, enduring one miserable treatment after enough. As all cancer patients know, the treatment often seems worse than the disease. And he was so little. He didn’t really understand that all this bad stuff was supposed to be good for him.

His father couldn’t be at the hospital very much. He had to stay home and work to keep the health insurance in force. His mother, our daughter, hardly ever left Joe, but that meant someone had to take care of his four-year-old sister, Brigid. That became Helen’s job. Katie, of course, had to leave Joe to eat and shower, and needed to spend some time whenever she could, with Brigid. On those occasions, Joe and I palled around together, mostly patrolling the hospital hallways so that he could escape the all-too-familiar surroundings of the pediatric cancer ward.

Sometimes, though, he’d just be too tired. Those were times when I sat in a chair in his room and held him in my arms and sang to him. All sorts of songs. Anything I could think of. Our favorite was “Jesus Loves Me.” It was just right for falling asleep.

 

I tried to sing softly, because there was always another child in the room, on the other side of a curtain. One day I had just gotten Joe almost to sleep when a man stuck his head around the curtain and whispered, “Please sing a little louder. We need to hear over here, too.”

We became known as “the family with the grandpa.” Once at a Dance Marathon--when the U of Iowa students raise millions of dollars for the children’s hospital-- I was going through a door at the Union Building, a whole crowd of people pressing both ways, and a woman I could not remember ever seeing before said, “Hello, Joe’s grandpa.” One of the best ways I could ever be identified.

According to the internet, “Jesus Loves Me” was written by Anna Bartlett Warner. It first appeared in an 1860 novel, Say and Seal, written by her older sister, Susan Warner. The words were spoken as a poem to comfort a dying child.

I knew nothing about the Warner sisters when I used to sing that to Joe. It just seemed right. It was the first song I learned as a child. Probably the first song most of us learn. When famous theologian Karl Barth was asked to summarize his 12 volume Church Dogmatics, he said, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

That will probably be the song I sing on my dying day. As I wash my hands…

John Robert McFarland