Detroit
Story 1975
He had recently become a Christian while staying at my hostel
on Cape Breton.
I knew he had a tough road ahead of him.
I wanted to see how he was doing and help him
find a church to attend.
I was always ambivalent about that sort of thing.
I hated to see someone like this young man make
a good start in his spiritual life and then get sidelined
in a dead church.
Time and time again, once a church got hold of a new convert,
they would promptly ‘educate’ the life right out of them.
Still, most people would need the support of a body of believers.
It just helped to show them how to negotiate the scene.
My young
friend and I planned to go shopping for a church
to attend on Sunday morning.
But this was Saturday night and we headed out for a long walk
to catch up on things. We
walked for miles it seemed.
We eventually found ourselves in the downtown area.
By that time the sun was going down and it was getting
colder by the minute.
We looked for a diner
or coffee shop, but everything
was closing and the downtown was quickly
emptying
of people. It was too late to turn back and too late to go
forward.
Eventually
we noticed an open door with a brightly lit interior.
We ducked in hoping
to warm up a bit and rest before the long walk home. Once inside, we were
fascinated by the architectural details.
It was a stately old building in
a crumbling inner city.
We wandered around admiring the old staircase,
the ornate tiles
and the marble wall panels.
We were in an old Masonic temple
from the look of things.
We headed up the staircase to see what the
mezzanine
and the balcony held.
We had been chattering away happily up to
that point,
but when we got to the top and surveyed the auditorium below,
we quickly lowered our voices.
Down below us we saw a few elderly black
folk carrying Bibles
under their arms.
Apparently the lodge had been
turned into a church and we had intruded on their service.
We sat down
out of sight and tried to be inconspicuous.
The few people gathered were thinly
dispersed around the huge auditorium.
Perhaps a dozen or so parishioners scattered 2 by
2, mostly older, mostly women.
They bowed their heads and prayed
quietly or spoke in low tones
while they waited for the service to start.
2 or 3 more people joined them and their prayer service began.
Not a very
impressive crowd. They prayed silently for a brief time.
They prayed informally, each tending to their own concerns.
Their voices, quiet at first, began to be audible to us.
Their voices
gradually became more animated.
Then one woman stood alone and began to pray in tongues.
I wondered what my young friend would think.
We had never talked about
anything like that.
I had little experience of it myself.
Soon another
worshipper stood and prayed in tongues.
And then another...and
another.
Before long there was an embarrassing cacophony of sounds.
Then one of the women lifted her voice above the others as she began to sing in tongues.
I had
never heard anything like that before.
It was an eerie tongue and an eerie
melody.
The others began to do the same tongues-singing.
We had never seen a church service like this.
The sound was confusing as
they all sang different
languages and songs.
Their voices became louder
now, more emphatic.
I was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say to my
friend.
It was so strange...hard on the ears.
In the next instant, the most astonishing thing happened.
All of their voices quite suddenly flowed and fell together
into the same glorious melody.
And then in the next moment, those few
voices were joined
by hundreds of other voices. ..angelic voices.
The music we heard was
indescribably beautiful.
There is no music on earth that compares.
It lifted us to our feet. We stood frozen, with
hair standing on end, transported into an ethereal realm.
Tears streamed
down our faces. We couldn’t speak.
Our eyes alone confirmed to each
other that we were hearing the same unearthly performance.
The hall
was filled with voices singing in majestic tones.
The sound of the
voices rose and fell together for some time.
We were
transfixed, weeping for the beauty and power of it.
And then... just as suddenly as they began...
the voices rose and
fell together one last time...
and then they stopped as one.
The hall throbbed with what can only be described
as Glory.
A few moments of silence followed.
Then without fanfare or remark,
people quietly gathered
their things, put on their coats and left for
home.
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