Prayer Warrior

continued

What does the theory say this underlying reality is? Unthinkably tiny loops of threadlike material scientists have named, for lack of a better word, "strings." Entities so infinitesimal that, wrote Johnson, "strings are to an atom as an atom is to the solar system."

Yes! I thought, reading these words, That small!

The universe might be understood, the article continued, as a kind of mathematical music, a cosmic symphony "played by an orchestra of tiny vibrating strings."

I've witnessed that vibration, I thought.

Not comprehending, not even beginning to inquire into the physics. Simply joining for an enraptured instant in that universal dance. Catching a strain of the ecstatic music of heaven.

Maybe, I thought, there truly is a "music of the spheres." Maybe what I saw as motion, others perceive as sound - what Christians through the centuries have heard as the singing of angels. Our friend Carrol Maxwell heard them as she grieved for the death of evangelist Roy Hicks. Another friend, Ruth Prince, would hear angel song as she prayed. "We realized," her husband, Derek, wrote, "that we were privileged to experience a tiny part of the total worship of the universe, spanning both heaven and earth."

Worship. That's what it felt like, that day at Wainwright House. A taste of the eternal worship of heaven..

And when this flesh and heart shall fail, and
mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil, a life
of joy and peace.
     John Newton "Amazing Grace"

Once, fleetingly, I may have witnessed someone who was hearing the angels sing - another jewel for my hope chest. Becky was the six-month-old daughter of our friends Connie and Frank. I had volunteered to stay with her that evening so that Connie could attend Frank's company party given in his honor because he was being transferred that month to Michigan.

About 9:00, thinking the baby might have kicked her blanket off, I tiptoed into her room. To my surprise, Becky was wide awake, lying on her back. As I bent over her, she smiled.

Smiled? There's no word in the language for the expression I saw in the glow of the night-light. Her whole small being pulsed with a kind of ecstasy The room seemed alight more with what shone from her face than from the pale little bulb in the wall. I'd often reveled in a baby's smile; this was a different phenomenon altogether.

This was joy itself.

In a moment or two, Becky's eyes closed, and a sweet sleeping infant was all I saw. And yet ... for a little while, something not of this earth had been present in that room.

Frank and Connie moved shortly afterward, so it was not till nearly a year later than John and I learned of their tragedy A month after they'd settled into their new home in Ann Arbor, Connie found their little Becky dead in her crib, a victim of sudden infant death syndrome.

It had taken eight months before they could write the letter "To our friends." All I could think, reading it, was, I was given a glimpse of the joy Becky's sharing with saints and angels right now!

I wrote back, trying to describe what I'd seen that night in her room. Whether it meant something to those grieving parents, I don't know. But forever after, the joy of heaven has had an infant's face for me.

Preparing for my confirmation a decade earlier, I'd memorized ques­tions and answers from the catechism:

Q. What do we mean by everlasting life?
A. By everlasting life, we mean a new existence, in which we are united with all the people of God, in the joy of fully knowing and loving God and each other.

That was the joy, I believe, that I witnessed in Becky's smile. A split second of the everlasting life she lives today.