by John Maniatty
When I was about seven years old I began to give my 'heart' away.
It started out innocently enough. First, I gave a piece of my heart to my television heroes: the Maverick's, the Cartwright's, Captain Kangaroo and Superman. They became my friends and I wanted to be like them.
As I grew older I discovered sports, giving a piece of my heart to each of my favorite teams: the Giants, the Yankees and the Celtics (when I was a teenager, much to my fathers chagrin, I took my heart back from the Yankees and gave it to the Red Sox!). I played football, baseball and basketball, desiring to be like all those men whom I watched play. Many times as I played, I pretended I was one of them, scoring the final touchdown, hitting the winning homerun or swishing the final basket. I was a hero, at least in my own mind.
About the time that the Beatles came along I discovered romance. I began to give pieces of my heart to the girls that liked sports heroes (I never told them about Captain Kangaroo!). Of course, I quickly found out that I needed money to entertain young ladies, so money also got a piece of my heart. READ MORE
Dear Friends,
I believe music is one of the most powerful forms of communication in
the world. It has the capacity to cross over the barriers of language,
culture, race and ideology by reaching right to the heart of the listener.
My hope in offering you this collection of songs is that they would indeed
touch your heart with what I believe is the most powerful message in the
world — the good news of the love of Jesus Christ.
These songs are special to me in another way; all but one of them were
written by members of my local Christian family. This family has been
my support structure for over 25 years through all my struggles, stumblings
and mistakes, as well as all the miraculous things we’ve been through
as followers of Christ. We continue to walk together, endeavoring to express
God’s love through our words and deeds.
As we all move toward increasingly difficult times this kind of love will
become rare and wonderful in a world that is steadily growing cold and
dangerous. My prayer is that these songs will help prepare you for the
days ahead by pointing you to the One who can both melt your heart and
make it warm with His love. When the love of Christ guides us we can make
it through any difficulty because love never fails!
John Maniatty
Frugal Squirrel
