Loving Hand of God

　　Loving Hand of God-Orchid

　　I was born into this world on the seventh day of June

　　No sunshine broke the sky as I arrived

　　My father was a rector with a hard and heavy hand

　　My mother was thirteen and not his wife

　　She gave me to the sisters on the farthest edge of town

　　No one would be the wise or see my face

　　I became a man raised up by cemetery wolves

　　We earned our keep by digging beggar's graves

　　I guess that's just the way they showed me

　　The loving hand of God

　　Loving hand of God

　　When fifteen years had passed

　　they put me out upon the stones

　　To make my way with gypsies and with thieves

　　A kindly hearted cropper took me on to till his land

　　I'd work until my fingers they did bleed

　　His daughter was a deaf and mute with kind and loving eyes

　　The color of the bluest summer sky

　　A love grew strong between us

　　and I asked to take her hand

　　But the father said he'd sooner see her die

　　I guess that's just the way he showed me

　　The loving hand of God

　　Loving hand of God

　　And in the spring we stole away to find a life anew

　　With pennies and our bags to make our way

　　We found work with the magistrate tending to his land

　　And happiness was born again each day

　　And in the fall I married her and summer brought a child

　　In which there was no sign of me at all

　　And when I said that son of mine did have her father's eyes

　　She wept and said that he had come to call

　　I guess that's just the way he showed me

　　The loving hand of God

　　Loving hand of God