Heartbells All Ringing

Friday, February 13, 2026

Watching You

All along on the road to the soul's true abode,

There’s an eye watching you;

Ev’ry step that you take this great eye is awake,

There’s an eye watching you.

As you make life’s great fight, keep the pathway of right,

There’s an eye watching you;

God will warn not to go in the path of the foe,

There’s an eye watching you.

Fix your mind on the goal, that sweet home of the soul,

There’s an eye watching you;

Never turn from the way to the kingdom of day,

There’s an eye watching you.

Refrain:

Watching you, watching you,

Ev’ry day mind the course you pursue,

Watching you, watching you,

There’s an all seeing Eye watching you.

Author: John M. Henson

This video is not high quality, musically, but I suspect it's pretty close to the way it sounded when we used to sing it (without the drums and hand clapping, of course). Makes me think of Papa Burford (Lester) with his fine tenor voice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOT5fcagZ2Y&list=RDBOT5fcagZ2Y&start_radio=1

Matthew 6:1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. 2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: 4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. 5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. 6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

Matthew 15:8 This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.

Luke 16:15 And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

Matthew 10:29 Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. 30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Luke 12:6-7 Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

Galatians 6:7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. 9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. 10 As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

Thursday, February 12, 2026

I Am Thine, O Lord

I am thine, O Lord, I have heard thy voice

And it told thy love to me;

But I long to rise in the arms of faith,

And be closer drawn to thee.

Consecrate me now to thy service, Lord,

By the pow'r of grace divine;

Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope,

And my will be lost in thine.

O the pure delight of a single hour

That before thy throne I spend,

When I kneel in prayer, and with thee, my God,

I commune as friend with friend!

There are depths of love that I cannot know

Till I cross the narrow sea;

There are heights of joy that I may not reach

Till I rest in peace with thee.

CHORUS

Draw me nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,

To the cross where thou hast died,

Draw me nearer, nearer, nearer, blessed Lord,

To thy precious bleeding side.

Fanny J. Crosby

Here is a link to an informative article about Fanny J. Crosby

https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/fanny-crosby

Draw nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you. ~James 4:8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW4ne6Y5ldI&list=RDAW4ne6Y5ldI&start_radio=1

Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Bringing In the Sheaves

Sowing in the morning, sowing seeds of kindness,

sowing in the noontide and the dewy eve;

waiting for the harvest and the time of reaping—

we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

Refrain:

Bringing in the sheaves,

bringing in the sheaves,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

Bringing in the sheaves,

bringing in the sheaves,

We shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves.

Sowing in the sunshine, sowing in the shadows,

fearing neither clouds nor winter's chilling breeze;

by and by the harvest and the labor ended—

we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves. [Refrain]

Going forth with weeping, sowing for the Master,

though the loss sustained our spirit often grieves;

when our weeping's over He will bid us welcome—

we shall come rejoicing, bringing in the sheaves. [Refrain]

Knowles Shaw 1874

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK5YMDNDhSY&list=RDiK5YMDNDhSY&start_radio=1

Psalm 126:5-6

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Watervliet Church of Christ

Okay, new tack. I'm going to try to get myself a little bit organized here. (I can't say that with a straight face. LOL)

I'm going to go through some of the hymnals in the order in which the songs appear in each hymnal. There may be some repetition of songs I've posted before, but I will most of the time create a new post rather than just repeat a previous one verbatim.

There are a few hymnals that represent specific time periods in my life. My childhood years were spent in the Watervliet Church of Christ, a very small congregation made up of my grandparents and a few other folks who had migrated to Michigan from down South during or after the Depression. We had a few different hymnals during those years, all paperback, and all with a mixture of traditional hymns and Southern gospel songs. And all with shaped-notes.

So I'm going to start going through one of the paperback songbooks we used at Watervliet when I was growing up. I probably won't use all the songs, just the ones I most associate with the years I went to that church.

* * *

Here is some information my mother wrote in her memoirs about the Church of Christ in the place where I grew up:

Wathada’s memories - early days of the Church of Christ in southwestern Michigan:

When my grandparents, Ulysses “Ulys” and Annie Hicks, first moved to Bridgman, in Berrien County, Michigan in May 1942, they found there wasn’t a Church of Christ in all of southwestern Michigan. They found an ad in the newspaper asking for anyone who was interested in starting a congregation of the Church of Christ. Ulys answered the ad, and he and four or five other men and their families started the Church of Christ in southwestern Michigan. The ones I can think of besides Ulys are Wayne Lanham, Albert Bradshaw, Ervil Hancock, and Harley Story. They started meeting upstairs in the YMCA building in downtown Benton Harbor.

The congregation was only those few families, but we had Sunday school classes because they all had children. At that time Benton Harbor was a beautiful little city and a very good place to live and grow up. The congregation grew rapidly and sometime before 1946, they had purchased a building with a nice parking lot on Milton Street in Benton Harbor. That’s the church where I grew up. The building was filled every Sunday. We had a very good Sunday school and good teachers. When I was a teenager, we had a big class. We loved being together and though we didn’t have such things as “youth ministers” in those days, my teenage class was together several evenings a week - more than just Sunday and Wednesday nights. There was one summer when we were together every evening of the week with planned activities, which we planned ourselves with our parents’ approval. Our parents were very supportive and allowed us to meet in our homes, and they provided refreshments.

I remember that most of us loved to sing and one of the activities that we scheduled was one evening a week to get together and sing. Sometimes one of our parents would invite our whole class to their home after church for Sunday dinner, and we would spend the afternoon together, then go back to church that night together in a caravan of cars. We were with our church family the entire day almost every Sunday. Our parents also socialized that way. They nearly always invited another family or two home for Sunday dinner after church, or some other family invited them. It was a very good church. We had good elders then - Ulys was one of the elders.

Ulys was a very good singer, so he led singing most of the time. He taught a course every once in a while on reading and singing by shaped notes. He was also a very good preacher. He never “preached at” us, but he was a teacher, and he was so good at that. Everyone loved to hear him preach. He used charts pretty often when he preached, so he could lead the congregation visually through his sermon.

For a while after the church moved to Milton Street, several of the men took turns preaching, but in time they hired a full time preacher. The church grew and sometimes we had to set up folding chairs at the ends of the rows of pews to make room for everybody. In 1952, there were so many people coming to church from Coloma, Watervliet, Hartford and that whole area, that they decided they needed to have a congregation in that vicinity. So with the blessings of the Benton Harbor congregation, we started having church in Watervliet. Ulys was retired and he agreed to preach for the Watervliet congregation for one year, with no salary. The congregation rented an apartment in Watervliet for Ulys and Annie to live in during that year. Other families besides ours who were there and helped get the Watervliet congregation started were Harmon and Myrle Parker, Chester “Chet” and Regina Linville, Arlie and Marie Lynch, Reggie and Lucille Moore, Herman and Dessie Bradford, Cecil and Opal Selvidge, Albert and Gertie Brumley, Pauline Hembree Yingling. I’m sure there were others that I can’t think of right now.

The new congregation met for a while upstairs over Roy’s Bar on Main Street in Watervliet. It wasn’t very long before the congregation bought a nice little church building on the corner of North Watervliet Road and Hagar Shore Road. The men mortgaged their homes to pay for the building. It was a good little congregation and did well. But through the years, as the members of the congregation grew old, some died, some members moved to other states because they needed to be near their children in their old age -- there weren’t any young people to take their places in the church. So there came a time after a lot of good years, when the last of the original members, and the few who were left of the congregation decided there was nothing to do but to end the congregation and sell the building. It was sad, but necessary. It had been a really good congregation, with wonderful people. They loved each other as we are supposed to. They were family.

PHOTOS: Watervliet Church of Christ

(These pictures were taken in 1992. The Church of Christ had already sold the building by then. The sign over the door says The Church of Jesus Christ. But this is exactly what the building looked like when I was a child.)

Here are a couple pictures I retrieved from Google Earth that show what the building on that location looks like now:

The sign out front still says The Church of Jesus Christ.

Monday, February 9, 2026

I Promise

Sorry about missing yesterday. I started to check on something and fell down a rabbit hole (as one does). Still trying to refocus and get back to posts with more substance. The rabbit hole was from trying to separate songs I've already posted from those I haven't posted yet.

Give me another day or two and I promise I might just, maybe, have myself a little more focused, possibly... no promises.

Saturday, February 7, 2026

A Beautiful Prayer

Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder... And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt. ~Matthew 26:36-39

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXqg7xNY1lQ&list=RDwXqg7xNY1lQ&start_radio=1

(Yes, I hear this alto lead in my grandmother's voice.)