Saturday, September 17, 2011

The Light of the World is Jesus

I have been thinking about writing a series of blogs on how hymns have impacted me in my life. Not that I'm a good writer or anything.

I am feeling pretty down today. I miss my children in heaven so terribly much and can't wait to see them again. Oh, I hate the separation called death......hate it to much, but being angry doesn't change anything and crying gives me headaches....

The first memory I have of a song that has stayed with me all these years, was at Christmas when I was in grade one. I started my elementary education at the Blumenhof School near Steinbach, Manitoba. What I remember is that all the students filed into the church for the program carrying candles and singing, "The Light of the World is Jesus."

"Come to the Light, tis shining for thee, Sweetly the Light has dawned upon me, Once I was blind, but now I can see, the Light of the world is Jesus!"

I don't remember anything else about the program and not too much about those first few months of being in the first grade in Blumenhof. I do remember having a friend by the name of Dianna. I think we got along pretty good until she stayed over one night at our house. We slept together in my brother's bed. I don't know where he slept that night, but my friendship with Dianna was over after that night. I don't know why or what happened.

But we moved away shortly after that. We moved to a small pioneering community and finished the rest of elementary school there in Mennville. The first year it was still a one room school. I remember the grade eight boys being such extremely huge giants. They were all exceptionally tall fellows. I was paralysed with fear.

I was still not very fluent in English. We had only spoken low German at home and we were not allowed to use that language at school. The other two girls in the first grade were good friends and I was the extremely sly, new girl and I didn't feel like I fit in.

Well, I guess this doesn't really have anything to do with my theme. But to bring it back to that vein of thought, I would just like to add that in the third grade is when one of the girls in my grade came to me at recess and told me that she had asked Jesus into her heart at the meetings we were having at church that week. So after the meeting that night in my bedroom, kneeling by my bed I prayed to accept Jesus as my Saviour, Jesus the light of the world. I remember a sensation of light streaming in from the window and I felt so joyful and peaceful. I went to tell my mom what I had done.

I got my first Bible for Christmas that year and I loved reading it. I kept it close to my pillow at night, so I could read it at the first crack of dawn or when my two older sisters turned on the light for their own devotions, as we called it. There were five of us all sharing a room including two younger sisters as well! Very crowded quarters!

I remember praying for some older fellows in the community who were not Christians and some time after that at least one of them and I think eventually both of them decided to follow Jesus.