How Could They Say (Sing) That?!?

Our family sits in the balcony during Sunday morning worship at church.  My voice stops and my eyes wander during one of the songs being sung.  Around and below me I see

• A couple who will soon be relocating from the town where they’ve spent the bulk of their married years, spending their last Sundays at the church where they’ve embraced friendship, leaned on those friends during a wife’s bout with cancer, and raised their children–leaving for another job because the husband’s place of employment has announced it is closing
• Two parents whose sons have plucked their heart strings gutwrenchingly in the past couple of years by the choices they have made
• A young couple who has spent a year in the ups and downs of unemployment and juggling the alternatives for keeping a pay check coming and keeping the family on an even keel
• A family home for a year from a mission to university students in Spain’s Canary Islands.  They have to spend many hours and miles on the road sharing what they do with the prayer that people will think it is worthwhile enough to invest in it  financially.
• A single mom
• A faithful senior couple who have dealt with the uncertainties of a cancer diagnosis in the past year
• Junior year college students who are engaged to be married after graduation, but who have had to majorly adjust life plans for the next year because their university is closing
• An elderly couple who have physical mobility problems and are wondering how much longer they can remain in the house which they’ve lovingly made their home for over thirty years
• Parents of a troubled teen who has been separated from them by many miles for close to a year in order to be in a place where he can receive help
• A grad student who isn’t sure what life holds for him when he finishes his degree this spring
• My own dear husband standing beside me, who celebrates a birthday this week and doesn’t know what his job will be after May 31st, when his will end

I come back to the song we are singing and, fresh from taking in the circumstances of the people around me, I feel tears coming, for the words they–we–are singing proclaim

In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my Light, my Strength, my Song;
This Cornerstone, this Solid Ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My Comforter, my All-in-all–
Here in the life of Christ I stand.

I pay attention in my neighborhood and at Wal-Mart, I turn on the radio, I catch the late-night news–and the story is the same all around:  there are a lot of people living in shades of gray to black these days.  And there are a lot of talking heads countering the articulation of the bleakness with words like “change” and “hope”.  But there is this that is not being said:  When the curtains are pulled back to reveal the plans for that change and hope, the same gray cloud appears. 

There is no politician’s plan, no legislative action, no peace accord signed with the best pen money can buy, that can offer the change and hope people seek–need– in times like these.  My tears in the middle of the song were for longing met, for the singers were describing what appears when their curtains of gray and black are pulled back.  It is indeed a sight to behold.