Dear Friends:

Rummaging around the Word of Grace archives this weekend, I came across a 2001 message that was originally an entry in my journal during March of that year. It describes the last visit that I had with my parents in their own home before illness and the advance of years brought their lives on earth to a close in the glorious hope of eternity with Jesus Christ. When my first book was published, the editor insisted that this story be the last chapter. I hope that it blesses you as you start this week.

* * * *

“Would you like to take a nap?” my Mom asks her middle-aged son.

“No, I don’t like to sleep during the day.”

“Neither do I,” says Dad.

“I never sleep during the day,” I say, “unless I’m in a committee meeting. Then I only do it for anesthetic purposes.”

Dad laughs.

I reach down in my briefcase and rustle past the work in progress and the work to be started and find my harmonica. I pull it out and blow a note or two.

“Oh, you brought your harmonica,” Dad says. “I was hoping that you would.”

He disappears into the bedroom and comes out with the Hohner “Goliath” harmonica that I’d given him many years ago. He sits down in his rocker opposite from me and we begin to play.

This is soft and easy music made by two men who could follow its melodic paths in the dark.

“Man,” Dad says, “You know songs that I’d forgotten all about.”

“I love the old hymns,” I reply

“So do I and the new hymnals don’t have the great old songs.”

We play on.

Dad’s bald head glows bronze in the afternoon light of a warm March Monday. His big, gnarled hands grasp the harmonica and move it across his lips like he’s eating corn on the cob.

Through the screen door, I see a doe and yearling cropping spring grass under the oaks. The Rhodesian Ridgeback dog from across the road kept the deer away for years.Dad faithfully fed her after her owner died of cancer leaving his place abandoned and the dog orphaned.

A month ago, the dog was paralyzed by tick-borne Lyme’s disease. Dad called the county veterinarian. When he came to put the dog down, Dad watched unflinchingly, talking softly to the dog, scratching her ears until she stopped breathing. I stiffen my jaw and turn my head to hide the tears that well up when I think about Dad’s tenderness.

Then I blow the four note ascent beginning “O Danny Boy.”

“We’re going to make Momma cry,” Dad says.

We stop and replenish her Kleenex. Then we play on while Mom bawls and we grin and shrug. She always cries during that song, We’d be disappointed if she didn’t.

On and on we play, thinking of the songs that explain our God to us, define our faith, stretch our hearts and remind us of God’s love in the dark times. Dad and I share the gift of music like a loaf of fresh bread between two hungry friends. The notes flow through us and around us and burnish our memories and hopes to a warm patina.

The piano and organ that once stood side by side in my parents’ living room are gone. The piano is at my home where my son learns these songs. The organ is with a friend who plays it with the tender touch that my folks always insisted upon when it was played by one of their children.

But there is still music in this home. Life has its way of returning us to the fundamentals and a 91-year-old father and a 47-year-old son playing hymns together on mouth organs is about as fundamental as it gets.

One of us leads, the other follows, the order dictated only by which one of us remembers the melody first.

Somewhere the secretaries in two offices are taking my phone messages and explaining my absence. It is Monday after all. Work beckons from the briefcase at my feet, but there is a transcendent power in worship that picks us up and sets us down in secret and holy places accessed by grace alone.

We forget the melody sometimes and start over unashamed. We wander off into other tunes. We soar and hush, and finally fade away.

Then Dad asks what he always asks at the end of these sessions. “Do you know this one?” He leads and I follow into a familiar song of our fondest hope. The words are held in our hearts, the melody brings them to mind.

My heart can sing when I pause to remember

A heartache here is but a stepping stone

Along a trail that’s winding always upward.

This troubled world is not my final home.

 

The things of earth will dim and lose their value

If we recall they’re borrowed for a while;

And things of earth that cause the heart to tremble,

Remembered there will only bring a smile.

 

But until then my heart will go on singing,

Until then with joy I’ll carry on

Until the day my eyes behold the city,

Until the day God calls me home.

 

–Stuart Hamblen

Copyright 1958, Hamblen Music Co., Inc.

 

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.