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Softly and Tenderly

Our church doesn’t do a lot of the hymns I remember from growing up Baptist. But on Sunday, near the end of the service, two of our singers did “Softly and Tenderly.” Those of you who didn’t grow up Baptist but like indie films might remember it from the movie “Junebug.”

The song always gets me, but this time it really got me. The night before we’d gone to a birthday party for a friend, and we saw some people we hadn’t seen in years, and I’d been thinking about how far the tide has carried me from home. That song sounds like home. I was glad we sat in the back row so nobody could see me wiping my eyes. “Softly and Tenderly” is an altar-call song, meant to draw you toward the Lord … but you can also read it as a song of passing from one world to the next, Jesus calling you home. That’s supposed to be a happy moment. But for most of us, I suspect, it’s too soon. Always too soon.