The stragglers come in after the music has started. We two are among them, linked by hands and wearing our best church clothes — late, yes, but only two minutes. The music drifting through the halls told us where to go.
Grace abounds in the back of the chapel. Behind us, a group of college boys shuffles in. They scroll their phones and laugh together over unrelated matters, then file out again. The other seats are sparsely filled with mothers and fathers, ready to stay as long as their two-year-olds can endure. People keep coming and going. A lone wolf remains by himself in the last row — committed, listening.
I nudge my husband. (Whispering is allowed back here.) “Is it us?” I say.
He nods. It must be. He lifts one of his cowboy boots — “We’re too country.” And I laugh. (Also allowed.)
Another couple sits in front of us. I like them because they seem to like each other, and because her outfit is quirky. I notice that she, like me, is moving her mouth around the words of the prophet Isaiah, repeated over and over in the song. Do these words give her the same feeling of ancient belonging as they do me?
As the rain and snow fall down from the sky,
And they don't return, but they water the earth and they bring forth life
Giving seed to the sower, bread for the hunger
So shall the Word of the Lord be with a sound like thunder.
And it will not return, it will not return void
We shall be led in peace and go out with joy.1
It’s past 8:00. The little red-haired boy can no longer contain his glee, and he lets out a squeal that sounds like joy, indeed — but is not allowed, according to his parents. They gather him and his baby sister and carry them off to their bedtime. Smart people, no doubt, but I wish they could stay — because then the whole room begins to sing the words of Is He Worthy? and something very beautiful happens.
The joy of salvation, remembered and proclaimed once again.
Suddenly, I have a startling desire to be a more loving person. The weariness that keeps me worried about my own matters seems to be shaken off. I am Christ’s, bought and washed by His love, given a new well of love deeper than anything I have ever known before. It seems the most loving thing I can do to remain here, far in the back of the line, the back of the theater, letting my gaze and my efforts fall on others.
We are none of us clean and white, until He makes us so — we all come to the throne as stragglers, all of us groping in the dark for that best of all news. Late and weary, and with scuffed boots perhaps. But here, nonetheless.
Andrew Peterson, The Sower’s Song, text based on Isaiah 55