| I'm certainly no embracer of favorites: colors, foods and such. But I do have a favorite song. No, it's not the latest offal offered up by moderns yammering in an unknown tongue. Nor does it emanate from the 1960s, the formative years of my youth, when KAAY 1090 beamed 50,000 watts of clear-channel rock-and-roll power throughout North America. Instead, my favorite song sprang from a young woman's broken heart about 150 years ago. At age 26 and of frail health, Lina Sandell Berg helplessly watched in horror as her beloved father, tossed into the sea by a lurching ship, drowned before her eyes. Then from her pen flowed 650 hymns that mightily influenced the revival that swept across Scandinavia after 1850. "Day by Day" is my favorite. Why do this song's simple lyrics exert such a continuing influence over me? Perhaps it's my identification with the author's own difficulties in life. When my dad began to decline about a year ago, I couldn't have imagined the intensity of the next 12 months. And though he died unexpectedly in December, January revealed a greater difficulty: a large tumor in my wife's left kidney. Kidney removal, recovery from surgery and the diagnosis of a rare cancer quickly gobbled up February. Preparations for admission to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston consumed most of March. Our initial visit there absorbed the remainder of March, all of April and the first week of May. Our son married, and, not long ago, a serious car wreck inflicted him with numerous injuries. The stress of this facilitated his wife's plunge into premature labor (which was stopped), two hospitalizations and surgery. Then she lost her job and insurance coverage. Other weeks have been punctuated by chemo treatments and their aftermath, doctor visits, trips to Houston, wranglings over insurance and bills. Stress has been a constant but unwelcome companion. So it's no wonder that "Day by Day" never fails to comfort and encourage me. Perhaps you sometimes find yourself in similar straits; if so consider these fragments from the song: "Day by day and with each passing moment, strength I find to meet my trials here." As each day brings its own measure of difficulty, strength is meted out accordingly. We need not worry; it will be there. "He whose heart is kind beyond all measure, gives unto each day what He deems best, lovingly, it's part of pain and pleasure, mingling toil with peace and with rest." Life's troubles are not random happenstances, but are kindly filtered through the hands of God, interposed with the right mixture and proportion of peace and rest. "Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting, e're to take, as from a father's hand, one by one the days, the moments fleeting, 'til I reach the blessed, promised land." Herein lies the secret: one day at a time. There is an end, and each moment nudges it imperceptibly closer. We can survive, we can endure, we can prevail... day by day, and with each passing moment. Permission granted for not-for-sale reproduction in exact form including copyright. Other uses require written permission. |