CRIES FROM THE HEART

A friend of mine is a jazz enthusiast. A while back we were talking about the good old days. He told me that he and two buddies who also loved jazz, especially the blues would, on regular occasions, go to the local club and hear the best of the best -- both from the local bands and from those on tour.

He said that they had a certain criterion for judging who could really play the blues. It was how they played "Help Me Make It through the Night." It is a cry, from the heart, that goes right to and into the music. At least it should. He was saying that if you haven't experienced it, you really can't play it. You can make the sound, but it won't be coming from the depths of your soul, your heart. It may be music, but it won't be the blues.

There have been times in all our lives when our prayer, our plea, our cry, was simply, "God, help me make it through the night." The cry may have been the result of the death of a loved one, a sudden and tragic accident, an unexpected failure, a hurt inflicted by someone we loved most. The list is endless, but that pain escapes no one. The cry from the heart comes to and from all of us. It was Jesus' cry to God the Father in the Garden the night before He was crucified: "help me make it through the night."

And when everything in us cries "No more. I can't take any more. I can't take it any more," there is more: more nights, more pain, more tears. It takes courage, an act of the heart, not only to cry out to God for help, but to even want help, such is the severity of the pain. The pain eventually passes as the night turns into day, even though that "day" may be weeks or months, even years. The pain goes away even though the scars remain. Such is the way of life in this life.

But we never go it alone. No, we never have to go it alone. Sometimes we do. Our cries, however, never go unheard. God does hear, always hears. And God, always, somehow in some way, gives us the grace to go on even amidst the pain and darkness. Nor do we go it alone in our pain. No, we never have to go it alone. That is what our church family is for and what it is all about. We are to be there for one another, not just in the good times when all is well. More importantly, we are to be there for the other when it seems to the other that all seems lost and too painful to bear.

I write this not as some sort of personal, present self-confession. I write this not as a downer, if you will, nor as a reality check. It is written simply as a reminder that no pain of ours goes unfelt and no cry of ours goes unheard by God.

It is also a reminder that, as Christians, we are to reach out to others in pain and to listen to others as my friend and his buddies listened to those men back then playing the blues. Because if we listen well, we'll not only hear the pain, we will feel it. And we will be able to hear that pain, feel that pain, because we've all been there at one time or another in our own lives, several times, probably. We've all cried out from the heart. We've all made it through the night by the grace of God and through the love and support of friends who also have played and sung the blues.