{"id":340,"date":"2020-12-14T12:13:20","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T17:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=340"},"modified":"2020-12-14T12:13:20","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T17:13:20","slug":"i-wonder-as-i-wander","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/14\/i-wonder-as-i-wander\/","title":{"rendered":"I Wonder as I Wander"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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During the heart of the Depression, American folklorist John Jacob Niles was sampling original music of Appalachian hill folk.

While passing through the rustic town of Murphy, North Carolina, in July 1933, Niles paused to attend a revivalist rally.

The Morgan family, traveling revivalists, had been in town for a few days.  They had no money and no place to stay.  They had camped out on the town square, where they did their cooking and hung up their laundry.  Town officials declared them a public nuisance and ordered the family to depart.

The Morgans asked if they could hold one more open-air meeting.  That way, they hoped, they could raise enough money to put some gas in their car.

It was during that gathering that Niles heard young Annie Morgan. 

He later wrote:  \u201cA girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile.  She began to sing.  Her clothes were unbelievable[sic] dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed.  Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins\u2026

\u201cBut, best of all, she was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing.  She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song.\u201d

The line blew Niles away.

Would she be willing to sing that line again, for a quarter?

She did\u2026seven times for seven quarters.  Niles left with \u201cthree lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material, and a magnificent idea.\u201d

Niles put together a complete song, and six months later he performed \u201cI Wonder as I Wander\u201d for the first time.  It soon became a classic hill country Christmas carol:

I wonder as I wander out under the sky, how Jesus the Savior did come for to die.<\/em>
For poor ornery people like you and like I; I wonder as I wander out under the sky.<\/em>

When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow’s stall, with wise men and farmers and shepherds and all<\/em>
But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall, and the promise of ages it then did recall.<\/em>

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing: a star in the sky or a bird on the wing<\/em>
Or all of God’s angels in heaven to sing, he surely could have it, ’cause he was the King.<\/em>

I wonder as I wander out under the sky how Jesus the Savior did come for to die<\/em>
For poor ornery people like you and like I;  I wonder as I wander out under the sky.<\/em>

This rendition by Audrey Assad<\/a> \u2013 in which she sings just the first and last verses \u2013 captures its haunting, almost painful beauty. 

Whoopi Goldberg was asked during a recent interview which living person she admired the most.  She picked Pope Francis.  Then she added, by way of explanation: \u201cYeah, he\u2019s goin\u2019 with the original program.\u201d

It sometimes gets lost that the group most impacted by Jesus\u2019 \u201coriginal program\u201d was the poor \u2013 \u201cpoor, ornery people like you and like I.\u201d 

The gospels report that impoverished, ordinary, one-day-at-a-time people were drawn to Jesus like iron filings to a magnet.  He honored and loved them.  He spoke of the Great Reversal, in which the first would be last, and the last would be first. 

\u201cBlessed are the poor in spirit,\u201d he taught, \u201cfor theirs is the kingdom of heaven.\u201d  (Matthew 5:3)  The kingdom belongs to those who have nothing to fall back on, nothing in the bank for a rainy day. 

They abandon themselves to God because they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. 

Deep in her soul, a young Appalachian girl was filled with wonder \u2013 wonder that in a world where life isn\u2019t easy, Jesus is all we need.

That\u2019s God\u2019s original program. 
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During the heart of the Depression, American folklorist John Jacob Niles was sampling original music of Appalachian hill folk. While passing through the rustic town of Murphy, North Carolina, in July 1933, Niles paused to attend a revivalist rally. The Morgan family, traveling revivalists, had been in town for a few days.  They had no money and no place to… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9,111],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas-carols","tag-serving-the-poor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":342,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/342"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}