I saw something beautiful tonight. I try to meet with a friend once a week. One week, he takes a ferry to see me and we drink coffee or beer and talk about what struggles we’ve faced over the week. The next, I take a ferry to see him and we go to worship services at his church.His church is considerably more established than mine. It has a nice building with an excellent sound system, special lighting, and a good-sized congregation. My church meets in a high school cafeteria and every week we do our best to patch together the sound system for the praise team; the lights are the same lights that appear in high school cafeterias across the country.
The behavior of his congregation is also outside my realm of experience. Within my world view, charismatic was a word used to describe a viable political candidate and was certainly never capitalized. About the most Charismatic we suburban Methodists got was in the fiercely loud voices of the choir for which Methodists are known.
In the Calvary chapel, people hold their arms outstretched, palms up, taking in as much of the Spirit as they can. Although I’ve occasionally felt moved to such a posture, my upbringing has thus far rebelled against it.
This morning, in my church, we led with “Trading My Sorrows,” a song on which I sang lead. Some would argue that my performance background that kicked in while exhorting the congregation to more exuberant worship was Charismatic. I would rebut that it is a song that I know well and love and enjoy sharing with others. Perhaps that’s the beginning of the essence of the Charismatic experience.
Tonight, in my friend’s church, one of the songs we sang was “Famous One,” another song that I know well. It was the one song we sang that I didn’t need the words projected on the screen to sing. The commonality in both of these songs is that they are both on a CD given to me by an old friend, a friend with whom I now have little contact. The CD features her husband’s praise team.
As for the beautiful thing… we sat in the front row tonight. The stage on which the praise team sings and plays is a thrust with three steps around the perimeter. To our right were three men sitting together. During one of the songs, the man in the middle was so moved that he dropped to his knees, crawled to the steps, laid his forehead against the second step and prayed.
A few moments passed as we all continued to sing. One of the men left in his seat turned to the other and gestured. Both of them left their seats and crawled to their friend, placed their hands on his back and their heads nearly touching his, and prayed along with him.
Further moved, the original man completely supplicated himself, lying on his stomach. His jeans hitched up to reveal a dirty white tube sock on his left foot. Rarely outside of children have I seen such an utter absence of guile. His friends continued to rest their hands on his back until a realization passed between them that their comrade needed some alone time with the Lord. They moved back to their seats, but remained standing, their arms outstretched and heads tilted back.
Again, I was reminded of my old friend and thought back to the time I had wept while she listened or the time she wept while I held her hand. It was easy for me to imagine either one of us placing our head on that step below the stage and a hand on the other’s back. It is difficult sometimes to believe that we are never alone without Jesus; it is far easier to believe so when close friends are there to assure us that we are never alone without them.
On the way home, I missed my ferry by less than a minute. I looked in my wallet for my calling card to contact my wife to let her know that I’d be home later than expected. The calling card was not in there, but a tattered foil Hershey’s chocolate wrapper was. On it was the 800 number, code, and two phone numbers. One was a cell phone that I’d called many times in the past. The other was a home phone number.
After calling my wife, I went outside for a cigarette and paced. I knew that the time zone would insure that the cell phone would be turned off. I didn’t know whether my voice in a message first thing in the morning would be a welcome start to the day.
But I thought of those two songs and how worshipful music had played such a part in both my personal spiritual growth and in our friendship. And I thought of those three friends at the edge of the stage. And I thought about many messages delivered by my pastor about grace and forgiveness. And finally, I thought of an email I had once sent to the friend in which I told her that I’d forgiven my wife for every hurt she’d inflicted on me (whether intentionally or unintentionally) in the past, and how my friend had been amazed by that and had wondered whether she’d ever be able to do such a thing.
I wondered about whether I’d forgiven my friend for the hurts she’d delivered to me and whether she’d forgiven me. I thought about forgiveness. It should not be contingent on whether or not one is already forgiven. If it were, nobody would ever be forgiven. And yet, I’ve withheld my forgiveness, held firmly to my anger and my hurt. Has my friend done the same? I wondered.
Back inside, I walked back to the phone. I pulled out my wallet and removed that well-worn piece of foil. Cradling the phone between my shoulder and jaw, I punched in the digits. As I’d expected, it rang once and transferred to voice mail.
“Hi. I don’t know if you want to hear from me…”
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Sandra, Panama's Sole Survivor
