My Soul Cries Out

Last week I wrote how singing Robert Lowry’s hymn My Life Flows On in worship with Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church shaped my meditation, which persisted through the week. http://nstolpepilgrim.blogspot.com/2018/07/above-earths-lamentation.html Then we sang it again in worship with Milwaukee Mennonite Church yesterday afternoon (August 5, 2018). I had been singing it each morning between my lectio divina and Prayer Psalms, listening as intently as possible for the “sweet though far off hymn that hails a new creation” and attending to the faint echoes of the music in my soul. I know I sang it in snatches and in entirety both mentally and vocally through the days of the week. I believe it was beneficial and sustaining for me, even if incrementally, as I continued to wrestle with both internal and external lamentations, tumult, and strife.

For a long time that hymn/folksong has strengthened me and guided me when the path ahead seemed dark and uncertain. I used it for an important turning point in the lives and relationships of a couple in my unpublished novel The Ghosts of Mystic Hills Cemetery. I went back and reviewed that chapter and posted it in my Writing Workshop blog at http://nstolpewriting.blogspot.com/2018/08/nils-from-ghosts-of-mystic-hills.html. Having it come back in worship again a week later, was like bringing the sweet but far off hymn a little nearer and intensifying the echoes in my soul. Not just an affirmation of my meditations this week, it was as though I was hearing the assurance that the hymn that hails the new creation will indeed drown out, indeed drive out, that cacophony of the earth’s lamentations, tumult, and strife that had been weighing me down recently.

The singing of it in worship yesterday came in the context of 16 year old Soraya Keiser’s worship message (sermon) of her learnings from a double pilgrimage she took this summer. First was to historic civil rights sites in the southern US. Dare I call them shrines? Second was to violence torn Guatemala to by sharing life with its victims. Not only was I amazed at the profundity of her insights, but it was the sweet song of the new creation being sung aloud in our very presence.

We ended that worship by singing My Soul Cries Out, with its plaintive refrain of hope that “the world is about to turn.” Again, I was prompted to sing along with the great chorus, confident that “the poor will weep no more, for the food they can never earn; there are tables spread, every mouth be fed,” and God “wipes away all tears for the dawn draws near.” Despite appearances to the contrary, the largely hidden turning of the world is relentless and ultimate. Thanks, Soraya for affirming this with your words and these two songs!