Let it Rain

It’s raining today. A dark, heavy, steady rain – the kind that almost makes a wall. I was standing at a window in the hospital just now, and looking up it was like I was standing at the base of a great wall, one that extended from the hospital tower to the heavens. Only it was a wall of water, or rather, a wall of tears. Looking out, it was like I was staring at a wall of tears.

On Palm Sunday we sang one of my favorite hymns, “A Stable Lamp is Lighted.” It’s one of my favorites for so many reasons…I first heard it at the Christmas Eve service in my parish church when I was in third grade. I had a small solo that year, and I was incredibly excited. And I sang it well, to be honest. But later in the service – and unbeknownst to me – a slightly older girl sang “A Stable Lamp is Lighted.” She knocked it out of the park; it my have been the first time I experienced the raw power of music.

All these years later, in a different parish church, we sing this hymn on Christmas Eve and then again during the Easter season. Again I re-experience the raw power of it all, as I am forced to connect Christmas and Easter in a way that we are seldom asked to do. And even as I fight back my own tears, I sing:

And every stone shall cry
For thorny hearts of men
God’s blood upon the spearhead
God’s love refused again

And every stone shall cry! I see another wall of tears – a transparent wall between me and Christ crucified. A wall of water, but not one that is falling but rather one that is rising up, out from the crying stones on the ground.

On Palm Sunday we heard a sermon from an old friend of mine who loves to start things off with a story. This time around he recounted a Civil War tale. On a bloody battlefield in Georgia, a young Confederate soldier refused to kill. Amidst a torrent of bullets and knives and all manner of chaos, he stood there firing his gun skyward, unloading every last round into the heavens, refusing to shoot another man. He was exposed, defenseless, totally vulnerable…willing to take whatever came his way while refusing to do the one thing – killing – that might actually preserve his own life. And even now I see yet another wall – a rainy wall of bullets falling around that brave soldier. I picture him almost dancing as he empties his rounds – dancing to that haunting tune “A Stable Lamp is Lighted.” And every stone shall cry! The rain of bullets nearly forms a halo around him.

Sometimes I feel like that soldier – or maybe I just want to. With chaos and death and injury and hurt and sadness all around me, what choice do I have but to feel like I am simply firing my gun skyward and accepting whatever blows come my way? Or rather, what choice do I have but to fire my gun skyward?

There is something empowering, however, to think of myself as firing a gun into the air, and to say to the world that I can take the consequences. I’ll only go so far – I won’t kill – and I’ll take whatever comes from that. It’s very close to feeling totally defeated, but it is very different.

The rain has stopped, and the sun now shines. The buds of spring are all around – newness is thrust upon us.