His hands trembled with Parkinson’s as he rifled through the heavy, unkempt stack of wrinkled sheet music he had just retrieved from the back pocket of his wheelchair. He gave my mom a few sheets where she sat poised at the grand piano in the assisted living community, wheeling himself closer to the piano bench.
“Can you play these?”
Smiling, she carefully received his precious offering, setting the delicate pages in front of her. As she began to play the first few chords of the hymn, the piano’s resonant tones filled the room, echoing brightly in the open lobby.
It amazed me that at his age he still sang. I expected his voice to sound weak and fragile, an embodiment of what I now saw him to be.
As I watched him holding his stack of music, it struck me that no one here would ever know what he was like before the twisted fingers of time and disease robbed him of so many of the things he loved. What must it have been like to watch him standing in front of his congregation all those years ago as he led the church in worship every Sunday? After so many faithful years of service, did anyone remember his hard work? I only saw the shriveled man with the disorganized papers, desperate for an accompanist, and his disease that kept him from playing the piano himself. And I saw my own great-grandmother watching beside him, who sang in choir and taught piano lessons and served in her church before her mind and body began to decay. Like him, she hadn’t touched a piano in years.
Although the wrinkled form before me seemed a shell of the man he used to be, something whispered that he was so much more. He could no longer stand to lead his church in praise, yet he would faithfully wheel himself through the halls of his assisted living, singing hymns a cappella with the passion of a street preacher. As his disease sucked life from the marrow of his bones, he sang on, worshiping his Creator. His body fought against him daily, but somehow within his soul there was a deep well of joy that spilled over onto those around him. Joy that still flowed as he spoke of his late wife’s picture that hung on the wall of his room, his face lighting up as he told us how tendrils of sunlight would creep through the window to illuminate her image each morning. In a body of pain and death, he radiated life.
As the grand piano transitioned from the introduction to “How Great Thou Art” into the verse, he lifted his gaze upward and began to sing. His warm baritone voice echoed through the room with sweet vibrato, ringing out loud and clear. The sound spiraled upward, transforming the room into a cathedral as it floated through the hallways and balconies above, carrying powerful lyrics to passing ears. The sound was indescribably beautiful, far from the weak and trembling noise I had expected to hear.
My eyes began to blur with tears as the melody wrapped around my soul. For a few minutes, it was a tiny sliver of Heaven on Earth. I could suddenly see him, standing with arms lifted, in front of a choir, leading his congregation in praise. The whole room was rejoicing with him. As I listened, his voice seemed to rise to where all of Heaven was falling down in worship before the throne of God, to where the saints and angels and his wife sang along with him in radiant glory. Where he sings now, face-to-face with flaming Love.
I hope “How Great Thou Art” remains my favorite hymn. I hope that whenever I savor its sweet lyrics, I remember the taste of costly joy. Joy that spilled over into mine that day. I hope I can live a little bit like him, a man who knew what it was to live out Heaven on Earth. I hope I can still rejoice when time and pain and grief have left their mortal marks on my body—a body I fight so desperately to preserve in an image of perfection. A body that is passing away. When one by one, youth, beauty and strength are all stripped from me, I hope my spirit glows like a defiant wildfire. I hope I never stop singing.