For the healing that would flow from His own scars
From Mullins and My Deliverer
World AIDS Day was December 1. I wanted to write something about it, but I had no inspiration until this morning when I remembered someone I knew who became sick with AIDS several Christmases ago. In the earlier part of the decade, I attended a church in downtown Oklahoma City for about three years. Frequently, a man and his wife would provide special music in church. They were among the best I’d ever heard, not only because they were talented musically, but because they both beamed with the light of God. Sometimes, when the man sang he would drop to his knees and raise his eyes and arms to heaven. He was a genuine and passionate worshipper as was his wife. Then he got sick. And, everyone at church started praying for him like he was going to die. I had no idea what was going on because I didn’t know the couple personally. The only time I’d ever spoken to either of them was to tell them how much I enjoyed their music. So, I began inquiring around as to why everyone seemed to be nailing this man’s coffin shut before he was dead. And, then someone told me.
He’d been practicing the part of Joseph for the church Christmas program and was keeping up a grueling schedule between rehearsals, performances, and his full-time job. He was HIV positive and taking the miracle-working drugs that prevented AIDS; however, they often zapped his energy. At some point, he went off the drugs so he’d have the energy to play Joseph. Not long after the production, he got sick, developed AIDS, and died.
Even though I did not know him personally, when they announced in church that he had died, I sobbed like I’d been his best friend. Today, as I meditated on his worship of God and the talent he shared with friends and strangers far and wide during his time on earth, I felt this whisper in my spirit: “Tell the world I am in heaven! I am happy! I am no longer chained. I am no longer in torment.”
All of this has reminded me of a song by the dear, late Rich Mullins, My Deliverer. How appropriate that it begins with this line:
Joseph took his wife and her child and they went
To Africa to escape the rage of a deadly king
There along the banks of the Nile, Jesus listened
To the song that the captive children used to sing.
They were singing
My Deliverer is coming – my Deliverer is standing by
May all those suffering from AIDS escape the rage of this deadly disease. May God use our hands to hasten the miracle. Here is a YouTube video link to My Deliverer put to clips of the movie The Gospel of John.
@TERRITORY MOM – I love Rich Mullins, too. When put with the clips of the Gospel of John – it’s very gripping. Merry Christmas!
@TR – I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I was sitting at the breakfast table Sunday morning and God brought all this to my mind. At the time, people were upset that he’d not taken his medicine, but now it all makes such perfect sense. RIP David.
Phenomenal post Jen. I hope you find a thousand other ways to tell this man’s story – it is so heart wrenchingly beautiful when molded with your words. Now that is a Christmas story.
This is beautiful. I love Rich Mullins. I will watch the video later. I don’t have the privacy right now. You know sometimes you just need privacy for such things.