How Great Thou Art: Third Tuesday A Journey of Hope Continues

Ramsey Seikaly

Los Angeles -- He was quiet.  For the years had paid their toll on each phrase of his face.  Humbled by the burdens of life and the crucible of his own ambition and spent dreams.  Now nestled in the bosom of his past and the blossom of his hopes, renewed by the fellowship of his brethren.  

Though laid low by the obscenities of indifference and the cries and whispers of the unfaithful to the speculative demeanor of arrogance set afire by the bounty of unbridled avarice greed.  For there he lay between the hills and the valleys of his hopes and anxiety.  This was a man who stood before the rapture of rejection and abandonment by those whose self preservation was the mantra of their mission.  

Alone and bereft of even a morsel of companionship he arrived at the gates of the guild of writers by the hand of one whom he had known since birth.  By the spirit that forms the virtue in each and everyone.  There he stood on the promise laid before him by the love of the eternal that wrested from the grip of darkness the fallen children of the light.  

He came without word or speech.  Like many before and many thereafter.  Dreams of hope, visions of tranquility in the limelight of fame and fortune.  Now well passed his prime and facing his journey's end he paused with a look of a weary eye through the fractured prism of his spent love.  An aging vessel. A rudderless schooner drifting upon the open seas aimlessly searching for that harbored haven once promised yet unfulfilled.  

He passed the glass doors of this citadel of entertainment wondering whether he had made a mistake or turned a new page in his uneventful life.  

What did he see?  Where did his eyes settle?  Were they content to simply surrender to the inevitable? That manifest destiny of the discontent who traipsed through the very same path that he had tread.  To do onto others as you would have them do unto you.  For his journey  was arduous, slow and  inconsequential.  For he was but a small fish in a school of many seeking to reach the very same nirvana of their safe harbor.  

So in the midst of this uncertainty he was called by the voice that dwells in us all.  A voice that never lies but speaks the truth.  Some have called it the voice of reason while others call it the inner voice of ones consciousness, and yet dare we say, there are some who truly believe it is the voice of the Almighty.
  
For between Heaven and Hell some have said is where we all dwell.  At least that is what they say.  But whether he believed it or not was not why he came that Third Tuesday.  He came because he was called by the one whom some have called How Great Thou Art.  His name is the breath of life and his walk is the passage of time.  For eternity began with him and continues with him.  

So with an anxious heart he stood fourth row center unknowing the call that was to come.  To his left was his pillar.  A dear friend whose humility was the strength that brought the fullness of his inspiration even when his perspiration  fell like tears of blood from the scaffold of his denial.  And to his right was a new friendship forming in the vineyard of his faith.  

It was time.  For the hour had arrived.  It was here then that he stole a moment and with bowed head Sung His Soul For His Savior God To Come To Thee.  With a smile cast on the crest of a tear ,  his lips parted with the joy of God's ineffable glory  "HOW GREAT THOU ART!" 

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