Kittie Suffield - "Little is Much, When God is in it"

Kittie Suffield

In the late 1800s, one cold, stormy winter evening in Canada, bachelor Fred Suffield, living in a small cabin in the Canadian wilderness riding out a snowstorm when a frantic knocking at his door disturbed him. Answering the door, he found a man chilled to the bone. After inviting him in, the man explained that he was from a train that had stalled a few miles in the distance and the passengers were in danger of freezing to death. Would he be willing to provide shelter?

Of course, Fred consented, and hurried with the man to the site of the train. Fred crowded the passengers into his modest home and provided hospitality as best he could until the blizzard passed and they could get the train moving again. Later, one of the passengers, a young lady named Kittie, wrote him a gracious thank-you letter. Fred replied, Kittie wrote back, and a romance developed which later led to marriage.

Some time later, the couple moved to Ottawa and was led to salvation and began attending a local church. As they matured in their faith, they began an evangelistic ministry. One summer, they invited their pastor’s son, George, to join them in Westport, Ontario, where they were holding evangelistic meetings for a month. One evening, Kittie was playing the piano and she heard something in young man’s voice. She asked him to sing alone. He didn’t want to, but she persuaded him. His voice broke on the higher notes, and he was mortified.

Kittie worked with him, encouraging him to sing in a lower key. Over time, he developed a rich baritone voice and found his confidence enough to sing in front of his church. That young man was George Beverly Shea, “America’s Beloved Gospel Singer,” who joined Billy Graham ministries in 1947 and served until his death in 2013 (at age 104). Shea has sung before more people that any person in history.

Kittie was also a soprano singer and a songwriter, and wrote a few hymns. Probably the most well-known is a hymn that Shea himself liked to sing: “Little Is Much When God Is In It” – also well-sung by the Gaither Vocal Band many times over the years.

Kittie died in 1972, nine years after her beloved husband.

Little is much, when God is in it,
Labor not for wealth or fame.
There’s a crown, and you can win it,
If you go in Jesus’ Name.

Then Sings My Soul, Morgan, Robert J., Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Beverly_Shea
https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=8318946