The Third Verse

There is a man who sits near the back of the church.

I don’t know how old he is. Late seventies, maybe. His knees hurt. You can tell by how he stands. He puts a hand on the pew first. Then he leans on the hand. Then he stands up the rest of the way. It takes him maybe ten seconds.

He does it every service.

For the hymn. For the offering. For the last song before everyone goes back to their cars and their kitchens and their Monday problems.

Across from him, a few rows up, is an older woman with thin hands. She holds the hymnal with both of them because her wrists are not what they used to be. The pages are soft at the edges. She knows where the songs are before the rest of us finish finding the number.

When the third verse comes, half the congregation has already started fading.

That is how most of us treat hymns.

Get the first verse. Get the chorus. Move on.

But the old saints know the third verse.

They sing it quietly. No performance. No looking around to see who is still standing. They just sing it because it is the next thing in the book, and they came here to sing.

The old man near the back sings it too.

Not loud.

But he does not skip it.

I sit somewhere in the middle of the church and watch them, and it makes me quiet. There is shame in it, but the good kind. The kind that teaches a man instead of just cutting him open.

Somebody is doing a thing better than me, and they are not even trying to teach me.

They are just doing the thing.

There are funerals in those faces. Hospital rooms. Children prayed over for years. Money that got tight. Bodies that started refusing orders. Friends who are buried now. Mornings where getting dressed for church was probably harder than anything I had to do all week.

And still, they come.

Still, they stand.

Still, they sing the third verse.

The old people in a small church are not cute.

They are not nostalgia.

They are evidence.

“The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness.”

Proverbs 16:31

I believe arguments matter. I believe doctrine matters. I believe a man should be able to open the Book and contend for the truth.

But some proofs are quieter than that.

A widow with thin hands holding a hymnal.

An old man putting his weight on a pew so he can stand one more time.

The third verse nobody else was waiting for.

I think heaven notices that.