March 10, 2015 (Tuesday)
Have you heard of Sterling, Massachusetts? Why should you know anything about it? Here’s a hint: there’s a statue of a lamb in the center of town. A little girl named Mary Sawyer lived there. She had a pet lamb. Beginning to get the picture? Mary’s brother suggested she take her lamb to school with her, and she did. The little one-room school became the scene of much excitement that day. A young man who was visiting the school when the lamb arrived wrote the first four lines of a poem about it (You guessed it, the poem was, “Mary had a little lamb.”) Sarah Josepha Hale wrote the rest of the poem (some say she wrote it all), and soon it became a well-known nursery rhyme. The year was 1830.
I betcha you can quote the first four lines of the poem without even thinking about it. Many of you can quote the second four lines as well. Some of you know the whole poem. It has been set to music and a lot of folks know the tune, too.
One of the most famous incidents involving the poem took place in 1877, when Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and spoke the rhyme into the recorder. Time damaged the recording and so Edison made it again with better equipment in 1927. Recently, in 2012, the new 3-D imaging process has restored the original 1877 recording.
Another famous person associated with the rhyme was Henry Ford. He purchased the little school house, built in 1798, and placed it in Sudbury, Massachusetts with other buildings and items of history.
Mary had a little lamb,
His fleece was white as snow,
And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go.
He followed her to school one day,
Which was against the rule,
It made the children laugh and play
To see a lamb at school.
And so the teacher turned it out,
But still it lingered near,
And waited patiently about,
Till Mary did appear.
“Why does the lamb love Mary so?”
The eager children cry.
“Why, Mary loves the lamb, you know.”
The teacher did reply.The last stanza makes me think of 1 John 4:19, “We love Him because He first loved us.” The lamb frolicking among the school kids, in a place where he did not belong, reminds me of Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray.” The lamb’s affection for Mary makes me think of what Jesus said: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27 NIV). Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me–” (John 10:14). Are you one of the Lord’s sheep?