The song that lets sorrow tell the truth

Last month, another family requested I play “It Is Well with My Soul” for their loved one’s funeral.

After nearly 50 years of playing the piano for funeral services, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve played that hymn.

The sorrows like sea billows are a given. They arrive for all of us eventually. The question is not whether suffering comes. The question is what we have been taught to do when it arrives.

Those years at the piano have provided an unusual vantage point. Most people attending a funeral spend the service looking toward the front of the sanctuary or chapel. They see the pastor, the flowers, the family, and the casket. Sitting at the piano, however, I’ve spent much of my life looking in the