How Great Thou Art

There were about ten of us in one of the classrooms at the faith-based school where we were colleagues.  It was an August morning a couple of weeks before school started.  We had gathered to pray for one another, and for the students and their parents — a common practice. 

It was our custom to spend some time singing worship songs in addition to prayer; and we were blessed to have with us on that day the pastor of the church where we shared a campus.  In addition to being a wonderful preacher, Pastor Don also had a beautiful baritone voice.

We were barely under way when he began to sing “How Great Thou Art,” and we all joined in.  I got a little sniffly because those old hymns speak to me.  For years we sang them around the piano in my grandparents’ parlor at our family holiday gatherings. 

But before we finished the first verse, the friend and colleague sitting just to the left of me was weeping so hard that we all got quiet.  Through her sobs she told us about her summer at the family home back east, where they were keeping vigil for her aging and ailing father.  He passed away while she was there.  At his memorial someone sang “How Great Thou Art.”

We made comforting sounds and gave condolences, assuming these tears of hers were expressions of grief for her daddy, brought on by the song.  But she cried out, “No!  The reason that I am so upset is because I hated my father.” 

She shared some details of the family history and the relationship with her dad, which are not mine to tell; and during her narrative the woman across the circle from me also began to weep.  She told a similar story.  She had a rocky relationship with her earthly dad.  He had died two years previously, and at his funeral someone also sang “How Great Thou Art.”

Then another friend began to cry.  He spoke of the strict upbringing by a cruel father who never spared the rod. He had left home at 18 to join the Army and never looked back.  His dad had died six years before, and he deeply regretted that he and his dad never really reconciled. At the graveside, someone sang “How Great Thou Art.”

It felt like an episode of the Twilight Zone, that three people out of ten would have similar stories of brokenness with their fathers, and that the same hymn would prompt these memories.

Make that four!  Would you like to take a wild guess what hymn was sung at my father’s funeral mass ten years before? 

Everyone was staring at me. I was beyond sobbing, crying so hard that I was gasping for breath and barking like a seal.  What started out as a day like many other … had become a day like no other.  It was a gut-wrenching moment and a turning point in my life.     

It was a perfect storm of painful tales from my prayer partners who made it safe for me to disintegrate in front of them.  I found myself sharing thoughts and feelings that had never really surfaced before.  For the ten years since he died, and way before that, back into my childhood; I had practiced resentment, anger and unforgiveness toward my dad.

He was a charming, intelligent man who loved his wife and sons, and he was a lifelong alcoholic.  There are many tender recollections of Dad, and there are also chilling recollections of the times when he didn’t show up.  This all spilled out in a torrent of tears and recriminations, right there in front of God and Don and all my friends.  This lifelong burden had bubbled to the surface.  I was raw and weary, drowning in remorse. 

The next sound was the voice of Pastor Don.  This gentle and caring shepherd was the right person in the right place at the right time.     

He knew exactly what I wanted — some measure of atonement.  He knew I wanted my dad to stand before me and apologize; but that would obviously never happen, because my father had been dead for ten years.

Don told me that to be unburdened — to be healed — I would need to forgive my dad from my heart.  He prayed for me and for the others in the room, and he encouraged me to pray for forgiveness for my years of bitterness.  This was not just about my dad and me.  This was between God and me.

He opened the Bible and read a parable about forgiveness from the Gospel of Matthew (18:21-35); and on that very day I copied the entire passage of fifteen verses onto 3 x 5 cards.  I carried them with me, looking at them several times a day, and it did not take long to commit the passage to memory.  All the while I prayed that God would forgive me for the long-standing anger toward my dad. 

This went on for several weeks, yet I didn’t feel any different.  There was still a heart of stone within me.  God could have snapped His fingers and healed this heart of mine in an instant, but I have discovered that His timing and my timing do not always coincide.  Sometimes the Lord answers a prayer with, “Not just yet,” because there is some work to be done.

Four months in, the softening began; and it took another year to come to a place of contentment.  This journey had begun in August of 1981, and by God’s grace, by Christmas of 1982, this heart of stone had become a heart of flesh. 

There is a lovely irony about this story, and it brings a smile to my face.  It has to do with the passage of Scripture from Matthew.  The following verses are a dialogue between Peter and Jesus, and they introduce the aforementioned parable.

Then Peter came and said to Him, “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?  Up to seven times?”  Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.”   Mt. 18:21-22

I begged for forgiveness every day for sixteen months; and every day for sixteen months I prayed for the strength to forgive my dad.  Sixteen months of days is almost exactly 490 – seventy times seven!   

When I consider how deep my resentment was toward my dad, I am aware that God is still in the miracle making business. 

Oh Lord, How Great Thou Art!