Jesus Loves the Little Children

Our interim pastor has decided that we will sing one of the classic children's hymns each week because some of the children in our congregation don't know them. This week we sang "Jesus Loves the Little Children." You might know it:

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

My wife and I were talking about this and joked that it clearly seemed to have been written to us as children of the civil rights era, thus, as with all things boomer, it must be a classic. But when I looked it up I found that in fact it was written in the 19th century by C. Herbert Woolston. In fact, this song as I learned it is really just the refrain of the full hymn. Personally, I like that refrain better than the verses, but let me get back to the conversation with my wife.

She told me that she was talking to some others at work and that hymn came up. (Things like that happen in seminary a lot more often than I imagine they happen in the secular, corporate world.) While the folks there agreed that it was a good song to have sung to children in the '60s, it really didn't go far enough. So they added a new verse:

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Multi-racial, straight or gay,
Jesus loves them all today,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

I liked the sound of that, but we agreed it was still incomplete so we made up another verse:

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
When transgendered or disabled
They are welcomed at the table,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

We both thought that this was a more complete (though probably still not all inclusive) song. Hoping that others might find it useful I post it here to share it with anyone interested.

Posted by JoKeR at October 06, 2005 07:53 PM | TrackBack