It’s Sunday morning and the faithful have gathered. The room at Hometown Friends Church is fuller than usual. The three people sitting in front of me aren’t familiar faces. When we do the “stand up and greet those around you,” I don’t ask them anything that might put them on the spot and therefore I probably come off a little aloof. If I didn’t attend church regularly, I don’t think I would show up on a religious holiday. I’d suspect the regular folk would somehow figure I was second class. I’d see smugness even if I had to manufacture it.

During the message I started looking in the pew Bible for the place where Job says, “I know that my redeemer liveth”—powerful words for an Old Testament guy who had fallen on such hard times that even his friends were telling him to give up on God. In this room 37 years ago on Easter Sunday Janet Hagen sang the George Handel version of this biblical passage and it spoke to me in a deep way.