A President -- His Mother!

This coming Sunday is Mother's Day, perhaps one of the best-loved days of the year!  If,  today, you have (or have sweet memories of) a loving and godly mother, you are blessed. 
One such mother was the mother of President William McKinley, and I trust you will be blessed and find inspiration in these thoughts taken from an article that I read and saved from the Sunday School paper 24 years ago.

     "The spry little woman of 87 smiled proudly at her neighbors.  It was Sunday, and she was walking to church with her son.  He was President of the United States.  William McKinley was devoted to his mother.  And he was a devout Christian, taught a Bible class, and was superintendent of a Methodist Sunday School.
      Every day of his mother's life -- during his time as a lawyer, Congressman, Governor of Ohio, and United States President -- when William McKinley did not see his mother, he either wrote or telegraphed to her.
      In mid-October, 1897, McKinley slipped out of the White House and took a train for Canton, Ohio, just to walk to church with his mother.  When his mother became ill in the winter of 1897, he had her home in Canton connected with the White House by special wire, and he kept a special train standing by under full steam.  One night when Mother McKinley called for William, attendants wired, "Mr. President, we think you had better come."  The answer flashed back, "Tell Mother I'll be there."  On Sunday afternoon, December 12, 1897, Nancy McKinley breathed her last in the arms of her son.  For fully an hour after she died, he did not move from her bedside.

      Less than four years later, while making a speech in Buffalo, New York, McKinley was cut down by a bullet from the gun of anarchist Leon Czolosz.  With no bitterness even for his assassin, the dying President said, "God's will be done."  Then he called for a hymn his mother had taught him, "Nearer, My God, to Thee," and he passed away to join the immortals.  His body was brought back to Canton and laid to rest beside his mother's."

While reading a newspaper account of McKinley's telegram to those at his mother's bedside, the hymn writer, Charles Filmore, was inspired to write the following hymn, using as a title the dramatic message -- "Tell Mother I'll Be There"!

     "When I was but a little child, how well I recollect
How I would grieve my mother with my folly and neglect;
      And now that she has gone to heaven, I miss her tender care;
O angels, tell my mother I'll be there.

      Though I was often wayward, she was always kind and good,
So patient, gentle, loving, when I acted rough and rude;
      My childhood griefs and trials she would gladly with me share;
O angels, tell my mother I'll be there.

      One day a message came to me; it bade me quickly come
If I would see my mother ere the Saviour took her home;
      I promised her before she died, for heaven to prepare;
O angels, tell my mother I'll be there.

      Tell Mother I'll be there in answer to her prayer,
This message, guardian angels, to her bear;
      Tell Mother I'll be there, heaven's joys with her to share;
Yes, tell my darling mother I'll be there."

If you are reading this little Blog today, and you have strayed away from the God your mother loves and serves, why don't you kneel and bow your head in prayer -- your mother's God will meet you there.