DAY 147: Songs That Signify the Patient is Better Triumphant Music is Played for the Sick and the Health Care Staff

DAY 147

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith

by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland

pastorrobert@paxpres.org

Week Twenty-one Saturday 8 August 2020

Songs That Signify the Patient is Better

Triumphant Music is Played for the Sick and the Health Care Staff

“In the 11 days he spent fighting COVID-19 at Montefiore Nyack Hospital, there was one thing Mark Schwarz couldn’t figure out. ‘Occasionally throughout the days there, you would randomly start hearing music playing and wonder, ‘What’s that for?’” Mr. Schwarz, 54, said last week. On April 20, when it finally came time for Mr. Schwarz to leave the hospital, he heard for himself: the cheerful chorus of the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ rang through the hallways to celebrate his discharge.” - From a recent newspaper article by the same name

‘Imagine’ – to borrow from another Beatles’ song, that you went into the hospital with COVID-19, weak, struggling for breath, saying goodbye to family without a hug or a kiss, knowing they would not be able to visit you in the hospital and that you might never see them again, weeks on a ventilator, drugged into a comatose state for your own good, only to awaken, discover you haven’t died, and then one day to have the ventilator removed, to be taken to a regular room and then discharged and, as they roll you down the hall toward what you thought you would never see again - your family and the bright light of the sun at midday, hear the Beatle’s singing on your behalf, “Here comes the sun, here comes the sun, and I say it’s all right.” To draw on a phrase from my generation, ‘How cool is that!’

English poet William Congreve in 1697 wrote “Music hath charms to sooth a savage breast,” a quote I kept posted in the music room where I taught music K-6 in an elementary school in Alaska. God’s gift of music does indeed have power to change the lives of those who listen.

Music will survive the cataclysmic end of time however that unfolds when Jesus breaks through the clouds in His second advent, music filling every corner, every niche of creation – ‘Imagine’ – “…every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in  them singing: ‘ To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb,  be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’” Revelation 5:13. ‘Here comes the Son – it’s all right!’

Reflective question: If you became ill with COVID-19 and survived, what song would you like to hear as you leave the hospital?

Reflective Scripture: Psalm 149:1 – “Sing to the Lord a new song,…”

Reflective hymn:

“When in Our Music God is Glorified” – Fred Green (1903-2000)

How often making music, we have found

A new dimension in the world of sound,

As worship moved us to a more profound, Al-le-lu-ia!