Another selection from my youth gets chalked up in my series Then Sings My Soul: The Hymns of My Youth. This week it’s “O How I Love Jesus,” a hymn that to my way of thinking was always a bit of an earworm (which I now note can be alleviated with medication — who knew?). In any event, this is another one that I recall as a recurring hymn from my youth. Only the first verse and the chorus have stuck in my mind (over and over; I now risk being stuck with it in my head for the rest of the day), but on the upside it represents a simple truth that doesn’t hurt to have sink in well. The words were written in 1855 by Frederick Whitfield (1829-1904) and set to a 19th Century American melody. Now that I’ve looked up the lyrics, there are many more of them than I remember.
O How I Love Jesus
There is a Name I love to hear,
I love to sing its worth;
It sounds like music in my ear,
The sweetest Name on earth.O how I love Jesus,
O how I love Jesus,
O how I love Jesus,
Because He first loved me!It tells me of a Savior’s love,
Who died to set me free;
It tells me of His precious blood,
The sinner’s perfect plea.Refrain
It tells me of a Father’s smile
Beaming upon His child;
It cheers me through this little while,
Through desert, waste, and wild.Refrain
It tells me what my Father hath
In store for every day,
And though I tread a darksome path,
Yields sunshine all the way.Refrain
It tells of One whose loving heart
Can feel my deepest woe;
Who in each sorrow bears
A part that none can bear below.Refrain
It bids my trembling heart rejoice.
It dries each rising tear.
It tells me, in a “still small voice,”
To trust and never fear.Refrain
Jesus, the Name I love so well,
The Name I love to hear:
No saint on earth its worth can tell,
No heart conceive how dear.Refrain
This Name shall shed its fragrance still
Along this thorny road,
Shall sweetly smooth the rugged hill
That leads me up to God.Refrain
And there with all the blood-bought throng,
From sin and sorrow free,
I’ll sing the new eternal song
Of Jesus’ love for me.Refrain
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