remembering the power

Pastor Sam was sick this morning. Not out sick, exactly, but 'in sick', spreading germs the way that stubborn folks do when they don't want to stay home. He was wheezing, pale, unsteady, and even more distracted than usual. I enjoy his preaching, but speaking to him before the service made me wish he'd stayed home.

Lee-Ann, who leads the singing, was sick too, but she wanted to add songs to the service so that Sam wouldn't have to preach for so long. Obliging pianist that I am, I suggested What Wonderous Love Is This, which I had already prepared for the prelude. (Low range, which is great for sick songleaders... and it's a Lenten song, which made me feel delightfully subversive among the Baptists.) Lee-Ann agreed, and also added O God Our Help In Ages Past. I agreed, chuckling to myself that God has indeed been the help of liturgical leaders across the ages.

So, we have three hymns in a row: What Wonderous Love Is This, Day By Day, and O God Our Help In Ages Past. Had I thought this though, I might have suggested pausing for prayer and reflection between the hymns, so that the songleader wouldn't have to sing so much at a time. This pianist's reelection motto: A Thousand Points of Hindsight.

Halfway through Day By Day, Lee-Ann's voice is giving out. Pastor Sam, conserving energy for the sermon by sitting through the singing, starts singing loudly to cover for her, but then has to duck out the side door for an inconvenient coughing fit. By the time we get to O God Our Help In Ages Past, Lee-Ann has quit singing entirely and I'm playing accompianment for a confused, warbling congregation; sheep without a shepherd.

Wonderful time for me to realize that I don't know how to play O God Our Help In Ages Past, indeed. I simplified the bass line some to emphazise the melody, and was doing better on the second verse, when my hymnal started to swing closed. I should have asked Lee-Ann to adjust my hymnal, since she wasn't singing, but instead I tried to hold it open with my nose. Mercifully, Lee-Ann cut straight to the sixth verse, so we didn't have to sing the whole song.

The text for Pastor Sam's sermon: But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9, 10)

I'm glad he didn't preach on to verse 11, with I have made a fool of myself, but you drove me to it. That's all the God-sponsored coincidence I can handle.