Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Don’t skim your eye
down the words. Go back and say the
words. Say them with measured solemnity,
four syllables to each word. Sixteen
syllables all together.
You are praising the
Lord. This is the Gloria in excelsis Deo that you are pronouncing.
In late morning on
the eve of Christmas Eve, I called my wife at the church. She is our pastor’s secretary. I was checking in, concerned about errands I
needed to finish while I was out on the road.
We spoke briefly about the errands.
Then I asked her when
she planned to be home from the church.
Uncharacteristically, she did not know.
Usually, she knows. Usually, she
knows because she knows what tasks she must finish, and she responds with a
time—an hour, two hours. This time, she
was vague. It was odd of her—my wife is
not a vague person, about time or about anything else. “I don’t know,” is what she said, and she
said it with a puzzled intonation, as though she wondered why she did not know
but said it anyway. I was puzzled, too, when
I hung up.
I thought that
perhaps I should call her back, to ask if she were all right. I thought that perhaps I should question her tone
of puzzlement, which suggested she did not feel in charge of her time that
afternoon. But I did not call her back. I had errands to do.
Here’s what I learned
later. After I hung up, an hour or two
passed at the church. My wife was
alone. She finished tasks. There is always a task to finish on a
secretary’s desk. But, puzzlingly, she
did not formulate a plan for the finishing of her tasks and for her getting
home. Then the church’s door opened and
a man entered whom my wife had never seen.
The man introduced himself and asked if the pastor were in. The pastor was not in.
The man seemed puzzled
by the circumstance that the pastor was not in at the church. “But God told me I must come to see him now.”
“Well, would you like
me to make an appointment for you, for later?”
“But God told me I
must come to see him now.”
After all—this is how
my wife reported the conversation to me—after all, the man was puzzled
himself. He had done what God had told
him to do. Now, it was the pastor’s
turn.
The pastor had left
the church not long before, with several plans in his mind. He had not been certain which of the plans he
would undertake. He would let my wife know
which plan he would undertake, he said, when he knew himself.
My wife dialed the
phone. The pastor answered.
“There’s a man here,”
she said, and she gave his name. “He
says he needs to see you.”
“Oh.”
“I wasn’t certain
about your plan.”
“Well, I haven’t selected
the plan yet. I don’t know why. Right now, I’m eating lunch.” The pastor thought for a moment. “Can he wait ten minutes?”
My wife looked at the
man. “Can you wait ten minutes?”
“Yes.”
She turned back to
the phone. “He can wait.”
“See you in ten.”
Two hours after the
man sat down with our pastor, he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord, and his
name was written in Glory.
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Late that same night,
on the eve of Christmas Eve, my wife and I relaxed on our couch. The house was aromatic with baking gift
breads. The Christmas tree was lit with
white bulbs, wax candles burned among our mantel display of spruce boughs and
red balls, and twinkling candles were alight in our windows so that, as my
mother told me when I was a child, if the Christ Child should be in need a
place to lie down, He would see by our candles that He would be welcome
here.
My wife had explained
to me the odd events of that afternoon—the man puzzled why the pastor should
not be at his office when God had indicated that he would be, my wife puzzled
about her inability to manage a time to return to our house so that she was
available just at the right moment to make a telephone call , our pastor
puzzled that he had not selected among his plans for the afternoon so that he was,
at the necessary time, just eating lunch.
My wife lay back on
the couch and put her feet in my lap. In
silence, I stroked her feet. The wine
was red in my glass, and white in my wife’s.
We listened to Susan Boyle sing Hallelujah.
The words of poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen filled the room.
We are busy people, she
and I, with several jobs between us—retirees who still work hard, and I have a new
book coming out, a memoir recounting my life as the son of a poet father—a
father whose poetry molded my relationship with our Father.
Relaxing on our
couch, weary after days and days of heavy work for both of us, nearing the
completion of our Advent anticipation of a miracle—humbly trying to experience our
anticipation with patience—the beauty of the season and of the Christ lights
overthrew me. I wept.
My wife looked her
question, but gently: this was her emotional husband.
“It’s beautiful,” I
said.
I wept for Cohen’s
spare, elegiac poetry. I wept for Boyle’s
easy voice. I wept for the still, calm
beauty of our decorated home. I wept for
giving gift bread to our friends, bread which my wife had created. But mostly I wept that, on the eve of
Christmas Eve, the Lord Himself had used my wife and our pastor for His own purpose,
which was to bring another soul to salvation—the godly using, which had puzzled
each of them, as their planning of their days was set aside.
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah.
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