Tremendous Tuesday Tidings, Friend!
The other day, I was reminiscing with some friends about old hymns we used to sing in church that we don’t hear much anymore. Oh, we love the new stuff, but we were feeling wistful about the likes of “How Great Thou Art” and “Just As I Am.” It made me think of my mom and the last couple of years of her life. She was a bit of a traveling musician if you can believe it! No, she didn’t have a tour bus with her band members on board and travel from city to city. Actually, I was her means of transport (or my sister or brother), and her “gigs” weren’t in arenas or concert halls but in the hallways of the nursing home where she lived.
Oh, how my mom loved to “walk” up and down the nursing home halls. We did the walking, and she enjoyed a push in her wheelchair. The facility had four hallways, and we covered them all several times a day. At some point during these strolls, she’d start to sing, and it was almost always the same song: “When We All Get to Heaven.” (Hm, I guess she was maybe a one-hit-wonder.)
I don’t remember the verses so much; those might have gotten skipped, but you can bet your bottom dollar she’d belt out the chorus: “When we all get to heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be! When we alllllllll see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory!” (The word “shout” always got a little extra oomph!!) I thought she had a pretty voice when I heard her sing in church when I was a little girl. Her voice sounded quite pretty even when she was a very old woman.
Sometimes, during her strolling “concerts,” she’d put up her hand (a signal for me to stop) and say, “Who lives there?” and she’d point to one of the rooms. The residents’ names were next to the door, and I could read them, but she couldn’t quite make them out with her elderly eyes. The problem was that she also had very poor hearing, and I couldn’t discreetly whisper the name of the person in her ear. She’d invariably say, “Who?” I didn’t want to scream the person’s name in her ear because we were right outside their door, and I felt bad hollering their name out in the hallway. After all, her fans were waiting, and she needed to keep singing. So, on we’d go.
Every now and then, she’d stop me again and ask, “Do you think we’ll recognize Jesus when we see Him?” That one always gave me pause. Where did that come from?
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure we’ll know Him when we see Him,” I’d answer as convincingly as possible. I mean, when John was on the island of Patmos in the first book of Revelation, he “fell at His feet as though dead” when he saw Jesus (Revelation 1:16). I did not want to get that specific with my mom out in the hallway of her nursing home. Shouting the words “fell” and “dead” in that setting is not advised. She seemed satisfied with my wishy-washy answer, and the singing continued.
I never thought of this before, but I think my mom’s illustrious singing career at the nursing home was her “ministry.” There wasn’t a whole lot she could do in her late 90s; she could no longer drive to the church and help with the women’s ministry as she did for many years. She couldn’t deliver meals to shut-ins. She couldn’t help set up for church programs and help make the coffee for various meetings. But, boy, could she sing in the hallways. The staff would smile and greet her as I pushed her along on her singing trail. I hoped the residents in their rooms could hear her as we passed by.
This all makes me realize that we can all have a ministry, no matter the size, no matter our age. Ephesians 4:12 says that we are equipped for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ. It surely doesn’t mean we are all meant to be actual Ministers. Lordy, who’d fix the plumbing? Who’d fly the airplanes? Who’d build our houses? We need everybody! But we can all have “a ministry.” It could be something as ordinary (but also extraordinary) as caring for our family. We don’t need our name to be associated with a mega-church to have a positive influence on our own circles.
Burt Bacharach and Hal David got it right in 1965 when they wrote: “What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. No, not just for some but for everyone.”
Maybe you aren’t singing up and down the streets where you live, but I bet you’re making a difference to someone somehow in your little corner of the world.
Keep up the good work, fellow ministers!
Written with love – – – – Patti XOXO
PS – – I’m going to take next week off from writing to you as we have frozen friends from Minnesota coming down to thaw out with us for a while! I’ll write next on March 11.
Mom & me after one of her hallway concerts back in 2019.