Jesus Loves Me is one of the most well known songs of our time. Most of us learned it as children, it’s sang in Sunday school classes, and is known world-wide.

Anna Warner was born into a wealthy New York family, quite familiar with the upper class. When she was just a young girl, however, Anna’s mother died and her father lost most of his fortune in the Panic of 1837. This forced them to move out of the city.

Their new home was a run down farmhouse from the days of the American War for Independence. The location of the farmhouse would eventually prove to be guided by God’s hand. You see, it was on Constitution Island, only a little ways from the West Point military academy. Anna’s uncle, Thomas Warner, was the chaplain for West Point. This would be important later on in her life.

Anna and her sister, Susan, were heavily burdened with the state of the family finances. They decided to begin writing stories and poems, in order to earn money to help out. Their writing grew in popularity very quickly.

Susan would go on to write over thirty novels, many of which were widely read and even translated into at least three different languages. Likewise, Anna would write thirty-one novels. Her most famous novel being, Say and Seal.

In this book was a short little song she wrote entitled, Jesus Loves Me. One of the characters in the book, a Sunday school teacher, sings the song to comfort a child who is dying. The song’s popularity spread rapidly.

Somewhere around this time, Anna began helping her uncle host Bible studies for the cadets at West Point. She would provide refreshments for the gatherings, while her uncle taught the Word of God. Eventually, Anna and Susan started writing hymns for each new Bible study session.

But of all the songs they wrote to share with the cadets, Jesus Loves Me became the most well loved. It became a tradition, with each new class of cadets, that they would teach it to them before any other song. And while the cadets trained, they were reported to have sung Jesus Loves Me.

Even after their uncle passed away, Anna and Susan continued to share Jesus’ love with the cadets at West Point. Neither of them married, but they adopted the young men of West Point as being the children they never had. The cadets would row across the river on Sunday afternoons to visit the two motherly ladies who cared so much about them. They became known as “Miss Warner’s boys”.

For over forty years, the sisters impacted the lives of the West Point cadets. It is impossible to know just how many of the young cadets came to know Christ as their Savior as a result of the Warner sisters and the Sunday School song they came to love so much, but there were many.

When they passed away, both sisters were buried with military honors because of the profound impact they had on West Point and its soldiers.

To this day, they are the only civilians buried in the West Point cemetery.

It’s amazing how one little children’s song influenced and impacted some of our most prominent military leaders. For example, Dwight Eisenhower was one of “Miss Warner’s boys”. He would later go on to lead the Allied Expeditionary force into the nazi’s Fortress Europe.

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Did you know how Jesus Loves Me played an important role in our nations most prestigious military academy?

A. M. Watson

Hebrews 13:8