What murders cannot kill

There’s a surprising grace that falls our way whenever someone unexpectedly sings a beautiful song.

It was a Susan Boyle moment whenever Angela Hockensmith began her solo in our church one Sunday morning. I could sense people looking wide eyed at each other. Like me, they were silently saying, “I didn’t know she could sing like that.”

Usually Angel

There’s a sat with her husband, Michael, and eight year old son, Andrew, and not in the choir. I suppose that’s why my mouth dropped when she began singing: I had no inkling she even had an interest in music. Thankfully, our music minister did.

After her musical debut, the choir latched on to Angela and held her tightly; they weren’t about to let her return to her former perch in the pew. I could sometimes hear her voice rise above the others, and I would break out in a satisfied smile, like I do when smelling coffee brewing or a rose blooming.

Because Michael worked in Danville, Ky., the Hockensmiths would usually arrive late for Wednesday night prayer meeting in Lebanon. But once there, they were all there. Andrew would be talking to anyone who would listen when Angela would take him gently by the hand and guide him to the children’s activities.

Then Michael and Angela would sit together. Michael would always have his Bible in hand, looking up every passage of Scripture I mentioned in my Bible study.

Angela would often request prayer, usually for someone else. The only time I recall her asking for themselves was when they needed a car. Several weeks later we rejoiced with them when they reported that God had provided a way for them to have an automobile.

We prayed for Angela throughout her pregnancy and celebrated with them when Naomi Grace was born.

And then they left as unobtrusively as they had arrived. “We need to live near Danville so I can be closer to the pawn shop,” he mentioned to me one Wednesday evening after prayer meeting.

Months passed.

Then, I received a text message from my wife during her lunch break, informing me that there had been a shooting at a pawn shop in Danville. I didn't think of Michael or the fact that he had become part owner of the pawn shop where he worked.

I wondered what went through his mind when the shooter lifted his gun in Michal’s direction, seconds before he and Angela were murdered.

I was told Angela begged for the safety of her little ones.

Naomi Grace was unharmed.

Little Andrew made the 911 call.

Shaking my head in disbelief, I thought of the twelve people killed in Washington’s Naval Yard, the sixty-eight or more killed and 175 injured in the shopping mall in Kenya, the 1429 reportedly murdered by chemical weapons in Syria, the 78 Christians killed in their church by a suicide bomber in Pakistan, and I asked myself, “Has the world gone crazy?”

No, the world hasn't gone crazy.

It’s always been that way. We've only made our instruments of violence more deadly, more prolific, and more accessible.

I wish we could unravel the violent mess we find ourselves in, not only as individuals but as nations. Is it possible to go back to a more peaceful, nonviolent time? I doubt it.

All I know to do now is keep praying and working for peace, and yearning for a day, someday, when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks (and) nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

I recall the last solo I heard Angela sing in our congregation before they moved to Danville. It was the entitled (prophetically? ironically?) “Alive.”

“Alive, alive,” she sang in melodious tones I thought surely fell from heaven. “Look what Mercy's overcome/ Death has lost and Love has won!”

Murderers can’t kill what cannot die.

In that millisecond between the time the bullet left the gun barrel and entered her body, perhaps, just perhaps---a song rose from Angela’s heart and ascended to the heavens.

And then settled there.

Forever.