It used to sadden me to watch the news. I’d see such awful stories about people whose actions I couldn’t begin to rationalize. Mothers, who murdered their own babies. Quiet teenagers, who suddenly snapped and brought guns into their schools. A soldier, who threw a puppy over a cliff. Where was God in these people’s lives? I wondered. How could anyone kill innocent children, babies who depended on them, pets who trusted unconditionally?
I have a better understanding now. I know what it’s like to kill, and I know how it feels to be the innocent one, betrayed by someone I once called Father. My faith had rendered me blind; though I watched the news, I didn’t see the world for what it was becoming. Now, my eyes are wide open. I know there is no one out there I can trust, no one who will watch over me and the people I love. No one can. They’re all dead.
In what’s left of this world, I am on my own.
Sunday, April 8, 2012
5 days before Infernal Friday
On Easter Sunday, the Reverend Brian Littrell stood at the pulpit before his congregation and proclaimed, “Christ is risen!”
“He is risen indeed!” came the response from the sea of churchgoers who had flooded the sanctuary of Calvary Hill Baptist Church.
When Brian had first come to this church ten years ago, its services brought only enough people trickling in to fill the first few rows of pews. This morning, every pew was filled. Pride was a sin, so Brian didn’t like to attribute the flourish in attendance to his own doing, but on this day, the most joyous of days for Christians around the world, he couldn’t help but smile out into the faces of his congregation and give a silent prayer of thanks for all that he had been able to accomplish here.
A decade ago, the church had been lead by a man named Charles Danner. Reverend Chuck, as he’d preferred to be called, had been preaching at Calvary Hill since its charter in 1963. The oldest church members, those who had lived in Marietta, Georgia for some forty years, described him, in his youth, as a vibrant preacher, charismatic and dedicated to his faith. The Reverend Chuck Brian had known was an old man with a kind heart, a wheezy voice, and unbearably dry sermons. No one dared speak an ill word against their pastor, who had raised their church from the ground up and continued to preach there into his seventies, yet privately, many felt it was time he stepped down and allowed new blood to take over.
Brian had been the “new blood” they craved, though no one had realized it at the time. He had been hired by the church as its new youth pastor, and when he’d arrived, fresh out of Bible college at the age of twenty-three, people had joked that he must have misunderstood the job description: the youth pastor wasn’t supposed to be one of the youth himself.
There were skeptics, sure, but within six months, they had been silenced. The new Reverend Littrell’s youth proved to be an asset to the church, rather than a hindrance. He had brought with him both energy and vision, and he’d quickly made an impact on his new church, revitalizing the Sunday school program, directing the youth choir, and organizing a new youth group. Under Brian’s leadership, the children of the church actually wanted to go to Sunday school; they wanted to sing in the choir. The youth group was no longer a corny thing, but something cool, something the teens looked forward to each week. No one could deny that the new youth pastor had made a positive change in a church that was otherwise in steep decline.
When Reverend Chuck suffered a stroke and passed away, Brian had been the obvious choice to fill his shoes. In the five years since he had become the minister at Calvary Hill, the church had seen a steady rise in attendance, to the point when, on holidays such as this, its sanctuary was almost too small to hold everyone who came to worship there. Brian infused his sermons with a blend of passion, personality, and humor that was appealing to people, especially those who were more casual about worshipping, and in this way, he reached a wider audience than Reverend Chuck had been able to.
Now, finished with his welcome message, Brian stepped back from his pulpit to allow that morning’s liturgist up to do a reading from the book of John, the verses telling of Christ’s resurrection. In Brian’s mind, there was no more powerful story in the Bible, except perhaps Creation itself. The miracle of rising from death had always been especially meaningful to him.
A hymn followed, and then the choir director announced, “And now for this morning’s special music, here is our very own pastor, Reverend Brian Littrell, with a new song he wrote called ‘We Lift You Up.’”
The praise band struck up a jazzy tune as Brian took the microphone from her and pulled it off its stand. For a moment, as he listened to the band behind him and looked out into the rows of people in front of him, he felt almost like a rock star. The thought was laughable, but it was the closest he would ever come to a music career. The regulars of the congregation smiled back at him with adoration, while the visitors gazed on in intrigue. They had likely never witnessed such a spectacle: a pastor performing his own special music? But at Calvary Hill, it was nothing new, just as it was old hat for Brian, who had started singing at church in his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky as a child and never stopped.
“When I think of all the things that God has done for me,
And how my faith has always conquered adversity,
I stand amazed to think that God really knows who I am,
And to think that within me, there is a master plan…”
To those who knew him best, it was a miracle that Brian was even alive to stand before a crowd and sing. At five years old, he had contracted a serious blood infection, which was made worse by a heart defect he’d been born with, though no one had realized it until then. His temperature had spiked high enough to cause brain damage, and his heart had stopped for thirty seconds. The doctors had prepared his parents for the worst, advising them to start making funeral plans, but to everyone’s amazement, Brian had bounced back from the brink of death and survived, leaving the hospital two months later as virtually the same happy-go-lucky kid he’d been when he had gone in.
“And at night when I pray to the Lord that I know,
I thank Him for his precious blood He gave to save my soul…”
Having grown up in a devout Baptist family with that experience never far from his thoughts, it seemed only natural that Brian choose the path of religion. He’d been called to ministry as a teenager and gone north to Cincinnati Bible College on a music scholarship. He had always possessed a natural talent for music, and had it not been for the call, he might have pursued a singing career. Instead, he wrote music on the side, and whenever he came up with a contemporary Christian song he was proud of, he performed it for his church.
“And that’s why
We lift You up,
Higher than the heavens;
We lift You up (because Your love is)
Deeper than the deepest sea;
We lift You up,
Higher than the mountains;
We lift You up;
He died for you and me…”
The church choir joined in behind him on the chorus, and looking out into the congregation, Brian was rewarded by the sight of people rising from their pews to sway along with them.
“Let me share with you just how I know He’s blessed my life
He opened up His precious hands and gave me a wife…”
His eyes panned across the front row and locked onto a trio of blondes sitting in their usual spot, in the very center. His wife Leighanne beamed up at him, her blue eyes shining in admiration. She looked especially lovely on this morning in her Easter clothes. A true Southern belle, she even wore white gloves.
Brian had met Leighanne Wallace over spring break, his junior year of college. That year, he took a mission trip to Mexico, where Leighanne and her friends were vacationing. Her beauty first caught his eye, but it was her sweet personality that had captured his heart. Over the next year, they had maintained a long-distance courtship, and upon his graduation, Brian had moved south to Leighanne’s native Georgia to pursue a more serious relationship. Two years later, they were married.
On either side of Leighanne sat the products of that unity: their seven-year-old twin daughters, Brooke Lynn and Bonnie Leigh. Named for both their parents’ initials, the two girls were a perfect blend of Brian and Leighanne, with their mother’s beauty and their father’s charisma. Brian thanked the Lord daily for the two miracles He had created when He’d touched Leighanne deep down in her soul and given him daughters. He knew no greater love on Earth than the one he had for his children, his family.
“And at night when I pray to the Lord that I know,
I thank Him for his precious blood He gave to save my soul…”
On that Easter Sunday, in the midst of his parishioners, Brian Littrell lifted up his hands and praised the Lord for His gifts of love and family, of resurrection, and of salvation.
