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page 314 in your hymnal
Easter Sunday in Strawn, Texas
It is Easter Sunday 1972. All is peaceful and quiet in the time-forgotten north central (but just a wee bit west) town of Strawn, where the population hovers around 700 and always will.
On the south edge of town is the historic Mt. Marion Cemetery, with its three-foot-thick rock wall and arched gate with castle-like parapets. Here, citizens from as long ago as the early 1800s lie in repose beneath the Live Oaks, Prickly Pears, horned toads, and roadrunners.
Across the street is the modest whitewashed wood-sided Trinity Baptist Church. The church has a red-tinted brick skirt, a 5/12 pitch three-tab roof, and a wooden steeple, pyramid-shaped and painted to match the walls. The steeple points a lightning rod straight to Heaven.
Trinity Baptist Church
Step inside, and a crowd of 50 worshipers buzzes like a beehive and fills the sanctuary better than you would think. This is a big crowd. Of course it is. It’s Easter Sunday!
The women wear bonnets or beehive hairdos (They wear their hair extra tall on special occasions), like brunette, auburn, blonde, or silver sculptures balanced on their heads. They carry their hair like women in less fortunate societies, and on distant continents, carry clay pots or woven baskets as they go about the ancient business of scratching out a life.
The men, most of whom wear overalls or Polyester work clothes for most of their lives, tidy up. They dust off the shoulders of the suit coat in the back corner of a small, crowded closet. A white shirt, slacks, black leather Sunday shoes polished with pride until you can see your reflection on them. Their suits are crowned with ties that have either gone out of style or were never in style to begin with. Some are tied too short and others too long, and, like Goldilocks in Baby Bear’s bed, some are just right.
Have a seat. Service is about to begin.
A Parental Duet to Beat the Band
This is one of those times when Ray Caudle is off living in faraway Fort Worth (down the road 50 miles or so). Ray normally leads the singing. In his absence, the pastor will do it. The pastor, after all, has a booming voice when he sings from his diaphragm or even deeper. Even with the sanctuary pews packed, it still bounces off the walls.
I can see him there. Black suit pants, a Snickers-colored western-cut jacket with a subtle diamond pattern accented in black, a white dress shirt, and a gray, white, and brown tie that, surprisingly, does not clash with his outfit. The tie is wide, which is fashionable, and the half-Windsor knot at his throat is thick and perfectly triangular. He taught me that knot, and for decades, all over the fruited plains, people have admired my tie tying.
He is my father. And he is brilliant, all but glowing on Easter Sunday, the biggest day on the Trinity Baptist Church calendar. His cheeks are full, his nose a little wide and accented by valleys that appear whenever he smiles. His eyes are clear, intelligent, with a mischievous twinkle. His face is the kind of tan girls bake in the sun on towels in their backyards to achieve.
“Let’s all stand, grab a hymnal, and turn to page 314! Amazing Grace! All together now…”
To his right and our left, on the outermost wing of the raised platform sits a blond upright piano, vigorously played by the pretty Brunette who has eaten a few too many of her famous drop biscuits and fabulous white gravy. Still pretty as a picture, she pounds the keyboard like it was acting up in church, and forces it to deliver enough sound for a marching band in that small worship center.
She is my Mom, and she is beautiful, and so in love with Jesus and her pastor and partner, William David Strother.
She forcefully coaxes the notes from the piano while he puts thumb and index fingers together and draws an invisible ampersand in 4/4 time, as if the congregation is a choir and he a conductor.
Their voices blend in perfect melody and harmony. Her alto is as powerful as his tenor. Everyone joins the singing—everyone but me. I have the lump in my adolescent throat that I sometimes get when Mom and Dad sing Amazing Grace.
When My Savior Gets to Me
It is that one phrase I cannot get free of, the one I got wrong for years until I actually bothered to open my All-American Church Hymnal as instructed and read for myself page 314.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee, how great Thou art, how great thou art…
What???
I had always thought Mom and Dad were singing, My Savior GOT to thee.
It made sense to me. Had He not gotten to me? Had He not gone to the greatest measures in the annals of history to get to me?
For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.—1 Corinthians 15:3
…Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, so that He might bring you to God, having been put to death indeed in the flesh, but having been made alive in the spirit…—1 Peter 3:18
So, my soul sings, my Savior God to Thee, because You got to me. You paid the only acceptable price of redemption. For me.
My Soul sings even when my flesh is weak.
My soul sings when my spirits are down.
My soul sings when my mind is overwrought with worry.
My soul sings in sunshine and shadow, in sorrow and joy, sometimes through the flood and sometimes through the fire.
And when my soul is silent and finds the words hard to say or the praise impossible to give, I sing to my soul…
Get up! Get up! Stop licking your wounds. Dust off yourself. Get up! My Savior got to thee! My Savior got to thee.
Happy Easter! I hope your soul sings and your hope soars.
