Mid-Week Musings

March 13, 2024

Suggested Reading: Ephesians 1:7

Dear NBRC Family & Friends,

The season of Lent without the hymn “Jesus Paid It All” would be something like the season of Advent without the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Their absences might leave us feeling somehow cheated and as if something familiar and treasured was missing.

The text of “Jesus Paid It All” was written by a woman named Elvina Hall. Interestingly, she wrote it in church while her pastor was preaching a sermon! Hall was seated in the choir loft of the Monument Street Methodist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, when she scribbled the hymn’s words on the flyleaf of a hymnal.

Hall’s pastor at the time, the Rev. George Schrick, remembered that the church organist had recently given him a copy of a new tune the organist had composed and titled “All to Christ I Owe.” Hall’s text and the organist’s tune were brought together beautifully and the hymn “Jesus Paid It All” has since then become well-known and widely used.

The next time you sing or hear the words of “Jesus Paid It All,” think about the debt of gratitude owed to Jesus for what He endured to pay the penalty for your sin and to wash its stain “white as snow.”

Pastor Ron

Prayer suggestion: As you pray, ask God to help you contemplate what Jesus endured to pay the penalty for your sin.

(On Sunday morning, March 17, the sermon title will be Jesus’ Words from the Cross: “‘I am thirsty.’” The Scripture lesson will be from John 19:28-29.)

Some of the information for this article is from the following resource:
Kenneth W. Osbeck, Amazing Grace (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1990), 121.