Hymns And Her

“Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things.”

Ephesians 5:18-20

It’s not something we’ve done before, and I’m still a little surprised we did it that night, long and stressful as the day had been. I was packing my bag for a quick trip north for work, and my wife, as usual, was quietly repacking it … in that swift, deft way of hers that manages to redo in two minutes what I’ve worked on for half an hour, revising my folds and stuff-ins to allow for a half-suitcase more room than what I would have had otherwise.

(Incidentally, this results in two things: 1) a happy arrival at my destination, with my bag surprisingly light and everything in superb, sensible, efficient order – and 2) a slightly irritable departure coming home, with my bag noticeably heavier, and several crucial laws of physics violently violated in an effort to get the exact same items back into some semblance of the way she so nimbly stashed them in the first place.)

But I digress. We were packing, and my wife, humming under her breath, paused to comment that it was driving her crazy that she couldn’t remember the exact words to a particular hymn, “Heavenly Sunlight,” that had been running through her head all day. She nurtured a fond and remarkably specific remembrance of her father leading that hymn in a worship service when she was a little girl. Unfortunately, hymns having long since fallen from the Hit Parade of ensuing generations, she’s had no cause to revisit the lyrics for a decade or two.

Songs do have their way, though, of floating unaccountably up from the deep and crowded ocean floors of memory, and hymns are no exception. Whatever currents and eddies of her restless subconscious had brought this one to the surface, it was distracting her, now, from the good work of salvaging my freshly pressed clothes from the ravages of mispacking.

So, about the fourth time she worked her way through “Heavenly sunlight, heavenly sunlight, flooding my soul with glory divine … la da la de da, la da la de da …” I set aside my handful of mismatched socks and traipsed out to the garage. By curious coincidence, I had happened upon a copy of the Baptist Hymnal out there earlier in the day.

No, actually, we don’t generally keep the Baptist Hymnal lying around the garage. But – due to some unexpected home repairs over the last few weeks – that space happens to be more-harum-scarum than usual right now … resembling nothing so much as our master bedroom, when the would-be master has everything strewn about for packing.

Somehow, amid the flotsam, the Baptist Hymnal had disgorged itself from its usual resting place. I retrieved it, thumbed through the index as I walked back to the bedroom, and presented the book to her, open to Page 472 of Memory Lane.

I then went back to matching socks, while she warbled her way through the hymn. Gradually, I found myself joining in, surprised at how many of the words came back to me:

“Hallelujah, I am rejoicing

Singing His praises

Jesus is mine.”

If you happened to grow up singing them, hymns, you may have noticed, present the same challenge as potato chips: you can’t indulge in just one. Over the next hour, packing proceeded to the joyful strains of “Take The Name Of Jesus With You,” “Redeemed,” “Victory In Jesus,” “No, Not One,” and “Somebody’s Knockin’ At Your Door.” We had a ball. I don’t know when I’ve passed a more pleasant evening, or when we last found ourselves in a more cheerful mood.

In truth, we were both a little dazed at how many hymns came back in on the breeze, and how much fun we’d had revisiting those forgotten corners of worship.

The mood still lingered in the wee hours of the next morning, as I scurried out the door for the long, cross-city, rush-hour drive to the airport. Takeoff was scheduled for 9 a.m., which meant being there by 7:30 – only it was after seven by the time I reached the freeway. Which wasn’t moving.

The mood dissipated. Seven-thirty came and went with me only a mile or two from home and a long, long way from the boarding gate. At five-minutes-to-8, I still had 11 miles to go – was sitting, surrounded, by a creeping, crawling cavalcade of cars – and was looking at a blinking sign that assured me the airport was still 35 minutes away. If accurate, that meant an 8:30 arrival … 10 minutes looking for a parking place … another 15 getting to security … another 20 getting through security … a mad run for the gate, where I’d just be on time to wave at my plane, rising above the morning smog.

I needed to vent. But, being a thoughtful husband, and realizing my wife, a fourth-grade teacher, was in the midst of her last-minute morning preparations – welcoming early students, gathering items for the day’s projects, answering parent emails – I called her anyway.

“I’m not gonna make it,” I told her, explaining in the vivid terms reserved for frustrated writers how many things were going wrong. I piled on the drama, ranting at the villainous vicissitudes of travel, raving at the cold caprices of the universe. She listened, as she is wont to do.

“I’ll pray,” she promised.

I thanked her, raged a little more, and hung up.

And – like that –

– like that –

– the traffic parted before me.

Like the Red Sea. The road just … emptied; the asphalt all but glowed. In 10 minutes, I was in the parking garage. In 10 more, I was striding through a half-empty airport. I walked straight through a deserted security line, to my choice of four check-ins, manned by four smiling TSA agents, all awaiting my selection.

The agents at the conveyor belt were smiling, too. No need to take off shoes or belt, they said. “Nah, we don’t need to see your computer.” I jogged down the wide-open corridor to find an empty seat right in front of the gate. A glance at my watch: 8:35. A quick check of the board, where the numbers reminded me of what I’d forgotten:

My flight was leaving at 10, not 9.

I sat there, a little stunned. After a moment, I realized I was humming something, under my breath.

“Heavenly sunlight, heavenly sunlight …”

Hope you know someone who prays like that.

Hope you have a hymnal in your garage, where you can get to it.

Hope you’ll get to it.