One of our regular readers, Elizabeth, shared the following comment with us and it’s so good, I had to pass it on. It came from a line in a play she recently saw, “Shout, Sister, Shout,” about Sister Rosetta Tharpe who, as early as the 1930s was singing and playing guitar in a gospel style that earned her the title: “Godmother of Rock ’n’ Roll.” In one scene she looks out at the audience in a spell of stage fright and says, “God loves you, and God loves me, and there ain’t a thing we can do about it.”

That quote puts her right up there in my book with the late Brennan Manning, a Catholic priest who articulated the love of God like no other. This is especially good to remember when thinking about someone, or some group of people that is hard for you to love. If God loves you and God loves them, then you had better start loving them too.

Rosetta Tharpe began her career in the ‘30s and ‘40s singing gospel blues, and a rarity for that time — she was a female playing blues guitar. And boy could she play. No wonder they called her the “Godmother of Rock ’n’ Roll.” She was way out in front of everybody. She started in the 1930s, sang her way through World War II, and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan prompted her to write her most famous song, “Strange Things Happening Every Day.” She continued to record and sing through the ‘50s and ‘60s until she died in 1973.

Despite her fame, institutional racism in the mid-1940s and ’50s was still everywhere. All restaurants and hotels were still segregated, so on tour, Tharpe slept on buses. She went around the back end of restaurants to pick up food because they wouldn’t let her in. Yet the spirit in her music never broke and the joy on her face never waned.

Over the last half of her career, she spent most of her time in Europe where she was especially loved for her rhythm and blues. Her most iconic performance was recorded in 1964, outdoors in a train station in Manchester, England, where she got down off a horse and buggy, strapped on a guitar, and began to sing to a crowd of people gathered on the other side of the tracks, “Didn’t It Rain,” a song about Noah and the flood.

Tharpe influenced a generation of musicians including Aretha Franklin, Chuck Berry and countless others. Her career, which spanned four decades, was grounded in both her confidence and the characteristic rawness she brought to her performances night after night. And always there was her faith. And, of course, the night she declared the unconditional love of God in a way no one has before or since — “God loves you, and God loves me, and there ain’t a thing we can do about it.”

What more can you say?