Chapter Three
The next day was Wednesday, which meant praise band practice in the evening. I spent the early part of the day writing more album reviews, hoping that Danny’s magazine would like them. I enjoyed writing them, whether anyone else liked them or not, but I would only get paid for them if someone else appreciated them too.
That evening, with golden sunlight pouring in the windows of the church room, I sat on my amplifier and talked with Jake about the everything that had happened in the last couple of days.
“Man, that’s incredible,” he said, wiping his glasses off on his shirt.
“It is. And I should probably thank you for your part in it.”
He waved dismissively. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Sure you did. The way you interacted with me was one of the things that convinced me you all were for real. The others, and you, all went out of your way to be friends with me, for no good reason except that I was there. And there’s the small matter of your financial generosity too.”
“I don’t think I deserve any credit for that,” he told me, putting his glasses back on his face and picking up his drumsticks. “But thank you anyway.” It seemed to me like he didn’t know what else to say, so he started tapping on the drum heads, tuning or pretending to tune them up.
Danny and Elizabeth came in the door, laughing together, and we got down to practicing. In our third week together, we were beginning to get a feel for each other; I felt like I could tell when Jake was about to do something on the drums, when Danny was about to unexpectedly repeat a certain part of a song.
It was also interesting that this was the first time I was playing praise music to a God I actually believed in and wanted to praise. I didn’t pay all that much attention to the lyrics, focused as I was on making sure I got my own part right, but at the end of the practice session, I picked up one of the lyric sheets and sat on my amp, reading it, while Jake and Elizabeth filed out of the room.
Danny lingered behind, though. “Sounded good tonight, Eli.”
“Thanks.” I put the page down and turned my amp off, getting ready to go back to my room.”
“You ever been on the roof of this place?”
I blinked. “What, this building?”
“Yeah. Come on.”
Curious, I stood, following Danny out the door and to the other end of the hall. He stood for a moment, fiddling with his key ring in front of a locked supply closet door, before inserting his key and pushing the door open. Against the far wall sat a metal ladder, bolted to the wall, leading the way up to a trap door in the ceiling.
Danny pulled the hallway door closed, climbed the ladder, and unlocked and pushed up on the trap door. It clanged aside, exposing a slice of twilight sky and stars, and inviting a cool breeze into the closet.
“I should go get my jacket,” I said.
“You’ll be fine. We won’t be up here long.”
“How did you even get the key to this place?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he grinned down at me, hauling himself over the top and onto the roof. “Just get up here.”
I pushed myself up the rungs, emerging like a prairie dog into the darkening evening, breathing in the gentle chill that whispered through the trees across the street. Danny was standing, facing downtown, where the lights in the skyscraper windows tried their best to push back the night. I moved up next to him.
He glanced over. “If you’re ever looking for me and nobody knows where I am, this is a pretty good place to look.”
“It’s incredible up here.” I could faintly hear the horns and sirens of downtown, drifting on the wind the three miles or so to where Danny and I stood.
“Sure is.” He sat down on the rough concrete. “What did you think of practice tonight?”
“It went well. I’m getting more comfortable with things.”
“How did it feel to actually mean the songs this time?”
I chuckled. “I definitely saw them a different way, this time.”
“I thought you might. Have you ever tried writing your own?”
“Nah, not really.”
Danny dug into his back pocket and pulled out a small, well-worn Bible. “You should try reading the Psalms sometime. It’s a whole book of praise songs. I think it’d resonate with you.”
“Thanks. I guess it’s about time I started reading something in the book.”
“It’s pretty cool to read them out loud, too. Ah. Here we go.” He had the Bible open to about the middle, and faced the city as if he was addressing the skyscrapers. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it; the world, and all that dwell in it. He is the one who founded it on the seas, and established it on the waters.”
Then he turned, speaking to me. “Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord, and who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who doesn’t lift his soul or swear to an idol.” He turned again, facing back to the city, and shouted, “Lift up your heads, oh you gates! Be lifted up, you ancient doors, so the King of Glory may come in! Who is this King of Glory? The Lord, strong and mighty!”
Danny’s words echoed down the streets and over the railroad tracks, and I clapped once, twice. “Well done, Danno.”
“You try it.” He flipped a few pages, squinting until he found the one he was looking for. “I think the musician in you will sympathize with this one.”
I stood and took the book. “Psalm 150. Alright.” Something in the back of my head was telling me that I should feel silly, and it was probably right, but I was caught up in the moment and didn’t care. “Praise the Lord,” I read.
“Oh, come on,” laughed Danny. “You sound like you’re reading a road sign. Put some oomph in it.”
“Praise the Lord,” I oomphed.
“Better.”
“Praise him in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens.” I looked up at the stars, twinkling at me in the dusk. “You up there!” I shouted at him. “Listen up! Praise him for his acts of power. Praise him for his surpassing greatness. Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet. Praise him with harp and…and leer.”
“Lyre,” Danny corrected. “Keep going.”
“Praise him with tambourine and dancing,” I continued. “Praise him with the strings and flute. Praise him with the clash of cymbals; praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord.” I threw my arms wide with a flourish. “Praise the Lord!”
Danny applauded slowly. “Not bad. Not bad at all. Yeah, I think the Psalms are just the thing for you. Definitely read those and then try writing your own.”
“I’m not sure I’d know where to start.”
“Well see, it’s hard for you,” he said, taking the Bible back from me. “Cause you don’t have anything to praise God for yet. I mean, you prayed for salvation, and that’s awesome. But God hasn’t actually changed very much in your life yet. He hasn’t done all the crazy-huge things that make you respect and revere him.”
“Abbie and I were talking about that last night.”
“Mmhmm. All that stuff will come in time; don’t get me wrong. When it does, you’ll really be writing from the heart. Until then I think you should read the Psalms. Read the whole book a couple of times; get to know God better. You can write about his goodness and holiness and all that now, but you’ll be writing from your head. Once you actually experience those things in your life, you’ll be writing from the heart.”
I nodded, not sure how to respond.
Danny looked over at me. “What do you say we get down from here?”
“I don’t know. I kind of like the view.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes, facing east, watching headlights wind their way between the buildings, hearing the faraway whistle of a freight train heading toward the stockyards. With the endless expanse of infinity above us, and the
sprawl of concrete and steel below us, it was as if we were perched between earth and heaven. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t have observed something like that a few days ago. Danny and Abbie had told me that God hadn’t really started working on me yet, and I hadn’t talked to him all that much or gotten to know what he was like, but there was definitely a new kind of spiritual awareness inside. I couldn’t put it into words, exactly, but it was there, as if some hibernating part of me had awakened and was seeing the world for the first time.
It was then that another, less spiritual part of me observed that it was getting pretty cold up there, and I stood, shivering inadvertently. “I think I might take you up on that offer to go back downstairs.”
“Suits me,” Danny grinned. We descended the ladder, and Danny locked the trapdoor and supply closet behind us. “See you Sunday, if not earlier,” he told me.
“You got it.”
“Take this with you,” he added, passing me the Bible we had read from.
“Alright. And I’ll read the Psalms.”
“You sure will. Later on, Eli.”
I thumped down the stairs and found a package waiting by the door. Perplexed, I picked it up; my name was written on the front, so I tore it open to find a letter and a book.
“Eli – you weren’t home so I dropped this off. Figure you need one sooner or later. Stanley.”
The book was, unsurprisingly, a Bible, bigger than the one Danny had just let me borrow. The cover was a dark-blue leathery material, the pages so new they stuck together. I’d never in my life owned a Bible, and there I was holding one in each hand. For a moment I couldn’t even dig for my keys to unlock my door; I just stood in the hallway, overwhelmed by friendship. I couldn’t believe how often Danny and Stanley and the others thought of me, thought of all kinds of people. They seemed to spend so little of their time on themselves, yet they were the happiest people I knew. I ached for that.
Finally I managed to wrap my fingers around my keys and push open my door, turning on the overhead lights and making my way to my bed, where I sat on my sleeping bag and pushed Danny’s small Bible open to the middle. I thumbed through a few pages until I found one psalm with a star next to it.
“Psalm 23,” I said aloud. “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want.”
I read the rest of that psalm, then the one after, then the next twenty. God sounded like someone I would enjoy getting to know, and indeed, I felt like I knew him a little better, like I’d just read an interview with him or seen a documentary about his life. In a way, I guess I had; that was kind of the point of the Bible. But I still didn’t know what he had in mind for me.
My head was spinning a bit by that point, still chewing on all the words I had read, not sure what to do with it all, so I reached for my guitar. Being as I’d never written a praise song before, I really had no idea at all where to start. The obvious thing seemed to be taking one of the psalms I had read and putting music to it. Could I do that? Was there some kind of copyright on the words in the Bible? Whatever; the song would probably never be heard outside of my bedroom, so it didn’t matter much.
I went back to the first one I had read, Psalm 23, and started strumming something that sounded a bit like the tunes we had been playing on Sunday mornings. A melody came soon after; I hummed it, then grabbed for a pen and paper to write down the chords I was playing. The whole thing came together in a hurry, and in a matter of a few minutes, I had a song, which I decided to leave titled “Psalm 23.” I was pretty proud of myself.
With the melody still swirling around my head, I put my guitar back in its place and climbed inside my sleeping bag humming the song. A lot was changing for me, and it was changing very quickly. Abbie had said that I might experience a lot of conflict or difficult situations as God started changing me, but was it possible that all the things happening in my head were their own conflict? Everything I knew about life had just been turned on its head. What bigger conflict could there be?
I fell asleep with that question echoing in my mind.