'God chose to spare his life:' How Ron Hamilton became music legend Patch the Pirate
Ron Hamilton never set out to be Patch the Pirate. A serious composer of formal church music, Hamilton never dreamed he’d become a children’s musician wearing the uniform of a ship’s captain and talking about scurvy and doubloons. But he lost his eye to cancer in 1978 and children began to see him as a pirate, so he became one and sold a boatload of records. Once he trusted in the winds that carried him, Hamilton found a thriving career that reached children.” - Independent Mail
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Now Patch, along with his family, face a new challenge: Hamilton’s early onset of dementia
Hamilton does not only a fair amount of things for children, but I remember a nice arrangement of Psalm 1 that’s in BJU’s hymnal as well. He seems to have a quiet understanding of genre that at times almost seems to tweak his own community, too.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
Ron and Shelly came to our school when I was in 7th or 8th grade and spent a week or so putting together a children’s choir and teaching us a bunch of skills. I remember him telling the story of his eye and he sang Rejoice in the Lord. I think it might not have been published yet. But I always remember the song in that context. It’s not always the songs that contain dozens of heavy truths that impact us the most, though I appreciate those hymns a great deal. Sometimes it’s a one-truth song in a memorable setting that takes a principle to a deeper level in your life. For me, what stuck in a formative way was that God does allow bad things to happen to “good people,” and He not only has His long-term reasons for doing that but we are also often transformed for the better in obvious ways by these experiences, especially as we welcome and look for that to happen.
So the “one truth” for me was this: for the believer, suffering is never meaningless or pointless.
It has become a very dear truth and I appreciate Ron’s contribution to making it really being to stick early in my life.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I’m not a big fan of movies, music, and stories, however clever and well motivated, as a primary ministry outlet. And, particularly in music, once the profit motive (publish or starve) kicks in the door of opportunity for scriptural error is wide open. I think that this caution (call it criticism if you will) is solidly based in Scripture principles.
Yet the paradox of my own personal experience could not be more pronounced. My own life was irrevocably, spiritually re-directed through a back to back experience on a Thursday and Friday in 1978—a message by Dr. Ben Strohbehn on Psalms 127 and the premiere of the movie Sheffy the following evening, a single line of which God used to change my thinking at the core.
Of my 4 grown sons, 2 attribute their professions of faith to the messages of the Gospel presented through the storylines of various of the Patch recordings (I wish I could remember the specific recordings). Just as an aside, the other 2 have also made professions of faith, one through the preaching/teaching of Dr. Frank Sells, the other in response to a family devotion time.
All that to say this: while I am still cautious of how much influence these mediums should be afforded, I am also very thankful for the opportunities with the Gospel that have been legitimately undertaken by folks like Ron Hamilton/Majesty music, Unusual Films, and others. If they have had no fruit anywhere else I can personally attest that the Lord has used them in my life and the life of my family.
Lee
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