A Joyful Noise

I was aware of someone motioning to me from across the aisle in church last Sunday.  Then I heard an intense whisper saying, "Could you please pass me my tambourine?"  It was my friend, Clara, the pastor's wife.  She normally sat at the end of my row to the left, but today she was sitting with a friend who was visiting the services.

I nudged my seat partner and passed on the message, gesturing as inconspicuously as possible for the tambourine.  "What?" the lady responded, her  face screwed into a puzzled frown.  She is 84 and very hard of hearing.  When she finally understood, she elbowed the 90-something lady next to her.  The tamborine was under the seat in front of her. Thankfully, the spirited song service was muffling our activity, because this elderly saint is even more deaf and cannot see well, either, but she, too, plays the tambourine that was lying next to Clara's. 

At last the instrument was conveyed along the row and reached Sister Clara's outstretched hand.  What a joyful sound as she energetically tapped, shook and kept time in a jingling rhythm to the praise song.  I think her feet were moving, too.  A few minutes before, this spiritual dynamo had stridden to the front to stand in front of the altar and give a message to the congregation from the Holy Spirit.  It was a strong, forceful word giving assurance of God's oversight and an admonition to "Fear not! For I am with you!"

Just as we were sitting down and the pastor was about to receive the offering for the children's missionary fund-raiser, his attention was drawn to the second row as he turned abruptly and said, "We need to have prayer for my wife.  She is having a severe headache."  As we gathered around her, he passed the anointing oil to me and I touched her forehead while many laid their hands on her and prayed fervently.

When her color did not improve and the seriousness of the situation became obvious, someone was dispatched to call 911.  After what seemed interminable minutes, an ambulance arrived, transporting our now barely-responsive leader to the hospital.  Word was not good, and many of us gathered at the hospital, coming and going until late into the night in our prayerful vigil.  By the next morning, the unthinkable had happened.  Clara had left us and gone home to heaven.

In our shock and grief and sad good-byes, we took comfort in the fact that the departed had attained her heavenly reward, the goal she had kept in front of her for a lifetime. And now it is not hard to imagine her in the celestial realms, singing and rejoicing, and even joyfully sounding the tambourine.