Singing with Dad Again

Our Sunday Service was concluding in the auditorium where tan walls gave way to lights over the front flooding the scene with various colors. The screen displayed the words we were singing – “Great is Thy Faithfulness”.

In my most recent grief, I had not noticed that the previous griefs of my life had been pushed back. When my Dad died, it took two years to begin to smile rather than cry when I thought of him. For my mom, it took a year and a half. For Pam, I had no idea when that would happen. Indeed, for all who grieve, something seemingly insignificant will trigger an immediate tear and then release us just as quickly. It is normal for this to continue for many years or perhaps the rest of our lives. It is because we loved them. 

I noticed that I smiled when Pam came to my mind and rarely broke down to cry. It had been months since I really hurt with grief for her, but occasionally a tear would roll down my cheek. I was content with that, never wanting to forget her. 

Evidently, healing had come, and I was basking in the freedom from pain, but grief is always with us after we lose those we love. Evidently, I had postponed my grief for mom and dad while I experienced the grief for Pam.

And there I was, enjoying the old hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” in church yesterday morning as the lights gleamed around the words on the screen. My voice swelled as the music reached its crescendo. Then, my voice broke, and tears filled my eyes as I heard the voice that I had not heard in two years. My dad’s voice was there in my right ear after a long absence. Grief had returned for my dearly-loved daddy. 

This is where it usually returned. In the place where I loved to be. 

Suddenly I was a boy again, sitting by my dad in church singing with him. My mind drifted back to the last time I grieved for him, and I smiled as I remembered…Singing with Dad…

Singing with Dad

Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.

A boy can learn much from just sitting beside a man in church. In the mid-1970’s l would sit on the back pew on one side of a sound system amplifier while my dad sat on the other side of it. Dad ran the sound system for the church. He had installed it in on Christmas Eve of 1973 and maintained it until he could no longer do it in the late 1990’s.

Sitting beside dad was a given no matter where we were. So, in church, when most young teens wanted to sit with their friends, I much preferred sitting by my dad. When the singing started, dad sang –  not singing halfheartedly or so low that he couldn’t be heard. No, he sang like a man, boldly and with conviction. No matter what the hymn, he sang so that you could tell that he had experienced what he was singing about.

One strong man singing about another strong man. If you have never heard such a thing, you could misunderstand a singing man as being weak, or a term used in my young years, a sissy. Yet a strong man singing about another strong man is powerful. In fact, the act itself gives more credence to the strength of both the singer and the one of whom he sings.

Prove it, you say? 

In “Sixteen Tons” Tennessee Erie Ford sang about a man who worked hard loading coal.

“The Ballad of the Green Berets”, sung by SSGT Barry Sadler was a song about men who stood between citizens and those who threaten freedom. 

Gordon Lightfoot sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” about men who did their best to keep a tanker ship afloat against all odds.

Finally, in “Big Bad John” Jimmy Dean immortalized a very big man who held up mine shaft timbers while 20 men escaped to live. Big John died alone, sacrificing his life for his friends.

While none of these men were perfect, I have never heard anyone say that any of them were anything less than strong men. These men told us through song of other strong men giving credibility to the strength of the men they sang of.

So it was in the 1970’s, my dad (a man of great personal strength) sang of a man showing me the credibility of the man, Jesus.  “Jesus Paid It All”, “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name”, “How Great Thou Art”, “To God Be the Glory”, and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” were songs I heard him sing about his Lord and Savior. His singing told me of his life experience. If he had never told me in words of his faith and life experiences, I could have understood them intrinsically in his singing.

A singer cannot hide his identification with the words he is singing. There are singers/actors who try to convince you of their personal experiences in their songs. Some do a great job, but dad was not an actor. When he sang, some of the phrases and words were so real to him that his voice would be different, his face would change expressions, or sometimes a small tear would form in the corner of his eye. This was transparency that could not be hidden from his son.

If this was something that happened only in church, a son could pass it off as being “religious”. I only wish I had today’s technology in the 1970’s. If I had, I could listen to my dad play the piano and sing today. Back then we didn’t have phones that would record things at a moment’s notice. 

More nights than I could possibly count, I lay in my bed and listened as my dad played the piano in the next room and sang before he went to bed. All those songs told of his faith in Christ. The one he played most was my favorite, “I Can Tell You Now the Time”. I knew all the words to that song, as well as the bass and tenor parts, before I ever saw the song in an old hymnal.

Dad would play with the pedal depressed on the piano as he sang:

I remember the time when in darkness I wandered (Farther from home). 

On the mountain of sin, I had traveled so long. 

Like the prodigal son, all my good I had squandered (Sadly I roamed). 

But the Savior came in and He gave me a song (‘Twas a beautiful song).

I can tell you now the time (I can tell you the time) 

I can take you to the place (I can show you the place)

Where the Lord saved me (Where the Lord saved me) 

By His wonderful grace (By His wonderful grace)

But I cannot tell you how (For I know not the how) 

And I cannot tell you why (And I know not the why)

But He’ll tell me all about it (He will tell me all about it) 

In the by and by (In the by and by)

I know why Dad sang that song so much. More than once, he told me about the day he accepted Jesus as his Savior. He told me the time, and he told me the place. The song obviously reminded him of that day.

As the years passed, I continued to sit on that back pew as much as possible singing and harmonizing with my dad. I no longer sit on the back row today. It would just not be the same. This morning I sat on a middle row in church as the song “Jesus Paid It All” began. Tears flowed as I heard dad sing in my mind. As the years pass, the sound recorded in my mind fades, but I will never forget his voice. Neither will I forget the things he taught me.

And so, today I sing from my own experience in life, Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain. He washed it white as snow.