This is an abbreviated account of the full story that first appeared in Homer Rodeheaver’s book, Song Stories of the Sawdust Trail, published in 1917.
Bobbie Steele was the only child in a non-Christian family. He never heard anything about God except when his mother needed a disciplinary threat. She would tell him that if he wasn’t good, God would punish him.
(At this point, I want to be clear. Whenever parents make those kinds of threats, they are teaching their children a heresy that says God saves good people and He punishes bad people. The truth is, we are all sinners by birth, by actions, and by choice, and we all deserve His eternal punishment. But the Good News is, ”God demonstrates His love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8)
Bobbie loved his father. They worked together and they played together. Whenever Bobbie was upset, his dad would comfort him by holding his big gold pocket watch up to his ear so he could hear the soothing sound of the ticking.
But all that ended abruptly, at an early age. His father suffered a fatal injury at work and, as he was dying, he asked Bobbie, “You like my watch, don’t you, son?”
Bobbie answered, “You bet I do, Dad!”
Then his father gave the watch to him, laid his head back, and died.
Bob’s mother remarried an abusive man who mistreated him and took the watch for himself. His mother was no help; she always sided with her husband and this time was no different; she let her husband have the watch. That was when Bob grabbed it from him and ran away from home.
He was able to find some work in the shipyards in Cleveland. When a co-worker falsely accused him of theft, Bob whacked him on the head with a shovel. Even though the man wasn’t seriously injured, Bob was sentenced to three years in prison for assault and battery.
After his release, he joined a gang of armed robbers and he began drinking. He hooked up with a partner and they operated an illegal whiskey still. When their operation was raided by revenue agents, his partner was shot dead, but Bob escaped.
During those years, he married a girl who knew nothing about his illegal activities. When she gave birth to a daughter, Bob tried to stop drinking but it wasn’t long before he started again and this time the drinking was worse. He pawned his father’s gold watch to buy more liquor.
Fed up with his drunkenness, his wife took their daughter and left him.
Bob was a no-good derelict. He was hungry, sick, and without hope. On one cold rainy night, he was huddled in a doorway and was thinking about committing suicide when he saw a large crowd gathering for a meeting down the street. He thought if he could get inside, he could warm up a little.
What Bob didn’t know is that he had stumbled into a gospel meeting.
Even though he was a little fuzzy-headed from his whiskey, he heard the Gospel preached by Billy Sunday, and he heard the crowd singing a song by William Martin.
God saved Robert Steele that night. And, like David, he could say, “The Lord…brought me up out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps.” (Ps. 40:2).
A few days later Bob went to see his wife and told her all that had happened. She tearfully welcomed him back into her arms and her life. And with his family restored, they invited his widowed mother to live with them.
When his daughter began taking piano lessons, the first real song she learned to play was the one her father had heard the night he was saved; MY HEAVENLY FATHER WATCHES OVER ME.
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