I learned to count by turning the pages of the Broadman Hymnal. A few years later, my fifty-cent lessons enabled me to play these songs on the piano.
Marty Magee
As the early church pianist, I often lose my place trying to read the words and play the notes. I now spend time studying the hymn phrases, many taken directly from scripture. It’s hard for me to play a song when I don’t understand its words. This is what spurred my interest in Ebenezer in the hymn, “Come Thou Fount.”
When I was a child my parents instilled in me a love for the English language.
A love for the hymns and a grasp of the English language would be useless to a Christian writer if she didn’t know the Author of the Faith.
I was a church member several years before I understood about a relationship with Jesus. For years, I chanted over and over, “Lord, save me, Amen” as though I were reciting “now I lay me down to sleep.” At age 16, I knelt beside my bed and asked Jesus to come into my life.
The scriptures I’d learned as a child and those old songs of the Church came alive for me. Never since that day nearly 45 years ago have I doubted the redemptive work of God in my life.
