Monday Morning Music Ministry

Years ago, when my wife had her heart and kidney transplants, the Lord used the circumstance to give our whole family a burden for others in the Heart Failure Unit at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. He also graced us with a boldness to pray with those patients who waited… or who received the medical miracles… or whose transplants went awry… or their families in those situations, or, sometimes, times of grief.

There were questions, always questions, and we were laymen with few answers. We often were asked by pastors, even, how we managed to deal with peoples’ confusion and fear and doubt and sorrow and terror and loneliness. Well, it was the same as we dealt with faith and hope and conversions and even healing. It wasn’t us, it was Jesus — all we could do was share Jesus. (“All”? Yes, it was everything we could do).

We frequently sang a gospel song that became many patients’ favorite: Leave It There. Its words include:

If your body suffers pain and your health you can’t regain, And your soul is almost sinking in despair,
Jesus knows the pain you feel, He can save and He can heal; Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

Leave it there, leave it there, Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
If you trust and never doubt, He will surely bring you out. Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

After a time I learned the amazing coincidence (?) that the gospel song had been written only a few blocks from Temple University Hospital, where we met for those services! C A Tindley, the son of a slave, educated himself, moved north to Philadelphia, secured a job as janitor of a church… and eventually became its pastor. His large mixed-race flock of 10,000 enjoyed his powerful preaching and his moving hymns for years. (One of his hymns, I’ll Overcome Someday, was transformed with different words and tempo into the Civil Rights anthem We Shall Overcome.) Tindley Temple United Methodist Church was his “home,” and today there is a C A Tindley Boulevard in Philadelphia.

So every time we sang that song in the Heart Failure Unit, we did honor to a man in whose neighborhood we sang, who taught untold multitudes (and still does, through such songs) that we should “be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God”… and leave them there at the foot of the cross.

By the way, another coincidence: this Gaither Homecoming video by Lillie Knauls and Babbie Mason is my favorite version. After my father died, in Florida, my sisters and I did not know what to do with furniture, kitchen appliances, household goods, and such, a thousand miles away from where we each lived. I called my pastor, whose sister, I knew, worked in a church nearby in central Florida. Could they find a needy family, perhaps, who could use these things? A few days later I received a phone call from another lady in that church who said she could indeed direct a couple families to the goods, and took down the information. Her name had rung a bell in my head but I thought, “no, it couldn’t be…” But it was. Lillie Knauls! A professional gospel singer, but also on the staff of that church. I was indeed happy to return blessings I had received from her through this performance…

But through it all, the simple message: through all of life’s challenges: don’t fret. Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.

Click:   Leave It There