Keep your chin up high

A secular song that can easily be baptized into Christian meaning is “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from the old Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, Carousel.   I think of that song in connection with chaplain interns at our local hospital.  Before Dr. George West retired as head chaplain at AnMed, he invited me to meet with him from time to time as he debriefed his chaplains-to-be.  They reported on patients they had recently visited in the hospital rooms, and the rest of us around the conference table  provided feedback.  

A female intern told of working with a woman who had severe difficulty walking.  Even when the medical team said she should be able to walk, the patient didn’t believe she could walk. She refused to try.  Then, the chaplain offered to walk with her.  At first the woman was doubtful about walking, even with someone beside her.  But the chaplain persisted, and one day, the patient agreed to try to walk. They walked down the hall with no apparent pain or harm to the woman. They walked more day by day, with the chaplain as the embodiment of Christ. Before many more days, the woman was dismissed.  As the chaplain was finishing her story of success with the patient, George and I started singing:

When you walk through a storm,

Keep your chin up high .  .  .

One by one, the chaplain interns joined in with us:

At the end of the storm
Is a golden sky .  .  .

And so on through the rest of the song.
There were more than a few tears as we all sang:

Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,
And you'll never walk alone.