Twenty-five of us surrounded Judy’s hospital bed last night.  I stayed back by the door while Becky, who actually knows Judy, slipped through the crowd to hold her hand and talk a little.

It must be strange, I thought, to stare up at a ceiling pondering your life and approaching death with no soundtrack but the sniffles of family and friends around you.  Maybe that’s why Judy sang.

She began Kumbaya but the drugs or fatigue wiped the simple lyrics from her memory and she stopped suddenly, unsure of where the tune went next.  She asked our pastor to sing it and he looked to his wife who looked back toward the door at me.  “Shaun, we need you here.” And so I sang.

When the song ended Judy opened her eyes for the first time since we entered the room, lifted her head and looked at me. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m Becky’s husband, just the driver tonight and a big fan of yours, Judy.”

“You sound like an angel,” she said.

Heavy medication is known to blur not only one’s memory but also one’s taste.

She asked me to sing some more and I did and the room sang along, watching with tremendous reverence and awe as this tiny Columbian ravaged by cancer closed her eyes, opened her palms and sang with all her might in a beleaguered whisper.

When the singing stopped I told Judy that in the Old Testament, when the Jews would war against their evil enemies, they would march out with the musicians at the front.  I told her this was because they either didn’t care for their music or them very much or because they believed there was something very powerful about songs sung to God.  I told her how thankful I was to be with her, able to help fight back the darkness with her for just a little while, how we all were so privileged to be in the fight with her.  “Let’s sing some more,” she said. “Do you know any Eminem?”

We all laughed and then we sang for another hour, prayed, observed communion with Ritz crackers and some juice.

Then Becky and I told her good-bye and slipped out as the music started up again.

I wish every atheist and agnostic, every cynic and critic hurling stones at Christ and Christianity, every die hard the-sky-is-falling crier, every wounded and weak and bitter and hopeless person on the planet, everyone like me, could have joined us last night.  Death was perched there like a vulture waiting to swoop in and snatch a life.  The Liar was there too waiting for silence enough, for space enough, to whisper defeat and despair into a dying woman.  But hope was there too.  Palpable.  It blanketed us all, gave us reason to sing, reason to laugh together.  And it gave Judy reason to pray.

“God,” she said.  “You are everything.  Without you we are nothing.  Thank you God for this day.  Thank you for loving me.  You are so beautiful. You are so great and so good to me.  I’m coming home, God.  I’m coming home to be with you.  I love you.”

I’m heading out the door this morning to catch the first of many flights to a place where children are clinging to the same great and good God who clings to Judy this morning.  It is the poor, the sick, the desperate who teach us the most about faith, hope and love and I’m ready to learn again.  And, after the sing-a-long with Judy, I’m more ready than ever to tell stories of hope in the midst of suffering here on this blog all week.  Come back every day to celebrate Judy’s God, the God who is everything to those who have nothing.