We’ve talked about the poem U2 frontman Bono wrote for Ruth Bell Graham before. He visited the Graham house in 2002, read poetry to Ruth and presented her with a book. A photo appeared in Decision magazine capturing the moment. But with that book of poetry Bono also included a poem he wrote about Billy Graham.
“The journey from father to friend
is all paternal loves end.
it was sung in my teenage ears
in the voice of a preacher
loudly soft on my tears
I would never forget this
melody line
or its lyric voice that gave my life
a rhyme,
a meaning, that wasn’t there before.
a child, born in dung and straw
with The Fathers love and desire to explain
how we might get on with each other again….”
for The Rev. Billy Graham (that preacher)
Ruth and all the Graham Family
from Bono (March 11 2002)
with much love and respect….
(Special thanks to John Schroter for taking the photo and jotting down the words.)
The Billy Graham-Bono connection goes a little deeper as we discover an interesting tidbit: U2 frontman Bono wrote a song for Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell Graham. A Washington Times story about the 2005 New York Crusade, billed as Graham’s last, included this bit about the rock band U2:
The evangelist geared the evening to young people, intertwining mentions of the rock group U2, St. Augustine and MTV. U2’s lead vocalist Bono, visited him and his wife at their Montreat, N.C., home, he said, and composed a song for Ruth Graham.
“In his song, he said we are ‘estranged by sin and bones,’ ” he said.
Which raises the obvious question for U2 and Billy Graham fans: Where is this song? So far a U2 song with the lyrics “estranged by sin and bones” hasn’t surfaced, and it doesn’t look the song will appear on U2’s latest studio album, No Line on the Horizon, which comes out next week.
“Few people of our day are more committed to using their celebrity for the cause of the poor around the world than my friend Bono.”
-Billy Graham
(endorsement for the book On the Move, which features Bono’s speech at the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast)
In 2002 Bono, the frontman for the rock band U2, visited the Grahams in their Montreat, N.C., home. Decision magazine published a photo of Bono reading poetry to an ailing Ruth Bell Graham. He presented her with that book of poetry, a volume by poet laureate Seamus Heaney, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature.
It seems that Bono wrote a poem of his own inside that book. The book is now on display at the Billy Graham Library and thanks to a visitor’s review we can see the first line of that poem:
“The journey from Father to friend is all paternal loves end. It was sung in my teenage ears in the voice of a preacher loudly soft on my tears.”
Bono has joined a cast of other celebrities in expressing thanks to Billy Graham. As an added Billy Graham-Bono connection, there are pictures of Billy Graham, Bono and Franklin Graham taken that day during Bono’s 2002 visit. To my knowledge, those photos have never been made publicly available.
Bono, the global crusader and front man for the rock band U2, expresses his thanks to Billy Graham in a video on the now defunct Thank You Billy Graham web site:
“At a time when religion seems so often to get in the way of God’s work, with its shopping mall sales pitch and its bumper sticker reductionism—I give thanks just for the sanity of Billy Graham, for that clear, empathetic voice of his and that southern accent, and part poet, part preacher, the singer of the human spirit I’d say. Yeah, I give thanks to Billy Graham. Thank you, Billy Graham.”
"I'm counting totally and completely on the Lord Jesus Christ, and not on Billy Graham. I'm not going to heaven because I've read the Bible, nor because I've preached to a lot of people. I'm going to heaven because of what Christ did." Learn more about Jesus > >
We’ve talked about the poem U2 frontman Bono wrote for Ruth Bell Graham before. He visited the Graham house in 2002, read poetry to Ruth and presented her with a book. A photo appeared in Decision magazine capturing the moment. But with that book of poetry Bono also included a poem he wrote about Billy Graham.
The 
In 2002 Bono, the frontman for the rock band U2, visited the Grahams in their Montreat, N.C., home. Decision magazine published a photo of Bono reading poetry to an ailing Ruth Bell Graham. He presented her with that book of poetry, a volume by poet laureate 
Bono, the global crusader and front man for the rock band U2, expresses his thanks to Billy Graham in a 
