FOLLOW ME

The year was 1968 and I was a new Christian; having accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my Savior the previous year, (and the summer after my high school graduation). Not one to waste a great deal of time, I had enrolled at a nearby Bible college; (which in the intervening decades metamorphosed into a Christian liberal arts university in which I was subsequently privileged to teach).

As the student body sat in chapel one morning, whomever happened to be charge of the service stepped forward and instructed the sound person to play a pre-recorded song. Suddenly, the strains of an unfamiliar hymn filled the auditorium, and a baritone voice began to sing the most poignant words,

“I traveled down a lonely road and no one seemed to care

The burden on my weary back had bowed me to despair,

I oft complained to Jesus how folks were treating me

And then these words He spoke so tenderly…”

There was just something so compelling about the words of the old song; which went beyond the rhyme, content and meter. The expressiveness and experiential tenor of the words lent such an eloquence to the theme which he attempted to express to his audience.

It seems to me the student body sat spellbound, as the three verses to the hymn played themselves out. As I reflect on it now, an almost ‘holy hush’ permeated the building that morning.

As the closing notes of our unseen guest and accompanying piano echoed across the chapel, and silence permeated the room, our college president walked to the podium, and provided the students a bit of information to which they had not been privy, ‘til now.

“The voice you just heard was owned by a missionary named J.W. Tucker. He is no longer with us, but died at the hands of rebel troops in Africa just four years ago.”

Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. There was just something so personally poignant having just been exposed to the song, and having just connected with the man who sang it; and to be informed that he had lain down his life for the Gospel of the Lord whom he had so dearly loved.

Almost half a century has come and gone since that day, and I have often reflected on the words of that old hymn by Ira Stanphill, and its relevance to every Christian who ever lived and moved and breathed upon this planet. And over the course of the past few decades, I have often sung it as a solo, and never fail to relate the story behind my personal association with it.

by William McDonald, PhD