June 9, 2005
Simple
I’m told of the Alzheimer’s-addled mother whose daughter had to put her into a nursing home. The first week there, she took her to a nondenominational chapel service. Mom had never been a churchgoer, even as a child, as far as anyone knew. At the chapel service they began to sing “Jesus loves me…” and this aged woman (in her 90s), who recognized none of her family members and was just barely hanging on, began to sing along, word for word.
Karl Barth, the famed voluminously loquacious Swiss theologian, was asked once to sum up his megasystem in a few words. It is said that he replied almost instantly, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”