I’ve Just Come from the Fountain

Background

O Lord, I’ve just come from the fountain,
I’m just from the fountain, Lord,
I’ve just come from the fountain,
His name so sweet.

I learned this spiritual years ago from the Kathleen Battle/Jessye Norman “Spirituals in Concert” CD, delightfully sung by Ms. Battle.  But it had never occurred to me to do an arrangement of it until we needed a “woman at the well” anthem at church a few years ago.  I suddenly wondered if this New Testament scripture might have even been an inspiration for it in the first place?

I decided to write some new lines that contextualized the song in this particular way, expressing the Samaritan woman’s joy that Jesus was willing to associate with her despite the enmity between their two peoples, and that he accepted her even though he could perceive her “transgressions”:

He told me all I’d ever done, but loved me just the same.
Now I’ll rise and walk with him, and ever praise his name.

How refreshing, to be accepted as one truly is. Or as the folksinger James Taylor expressed it: “How sweet it is, to be loved by you.”