unworthy hymns

19 May, 2026

A few Sundays ago, I stood before the Church body, freshly baptized, with a bouquet of yellow tulips in my hand. But as I stared into the smiling pews, I found myself tormented by a thought.

I am the first in my family to believe. Dare I have faith when so many do not? I’ve been told “you will know Him by His works,” but since I’ve believed, I’ve faced the regular heartbreak and hardships. Life has continued as it always has—there has been no caravan of miracles. How can this be? Other believers have described how faith comes as a wave of joy, a sense of righteousness, a great dowry of great gifts from the Great one above all. I won’t deny that I’ve experienced the works—joy, gratitude, assurance, and so on—since believing, but how can I know what is from Him and what are the coincidental results from a static world?

I understand that faith is not always easy. Life does not and should not become simple by following God lest everyone follow for the gold, and God wants us to love Him for Himself. I understand. But could faith not be made easier? Even the most ardent believers, raised in the Church with a heart like David, must concede that if God willed it, all men would believe. The Bible could have held a mathematical proof beyond the reach of its human scribes, one technology is only now beginning to verify; or an inscription upon the soul that no man could mistake for his own voice.

Only, if you would allow me to speak on that mark. For in the background of my life, I’ve felt the faint symphony of an ordered universe. It’s a ghost note, but over the past few years, the melody has crystalized into an unworthy hymn.

Though I’m chained in flesh and condemned in the salt mine of a sinful world, though my sins moor me and my failures multiply, still my soul sings from its bowels in a broken—foolish—attempt to glorify God. I reach for His blinding Glory and stumble below; I rise, and I sing again. One day, God willing, the singing will be worthy of the song.

There was no simple resolution to these thoughts. Standing there with the tulips, I realized none existed. Within me now is the approximation to faith—and while I may thrash and wrestle, that’s the premise.

After service, I took the tulips home. Where I live, a graveyard sits a short walk from my door. I’ve passed it for years and never gone in. That Sunday, I entered.

I laid tulips one by one on strangers’ stones. Yellow on mossy gray. A small garden where there had been none. I did not know the names beneath my feet, or who had loved them, or what they had believed. They were strangers, but I hoped that in some way, they appreciated the flowers.

There were more graves than tulips. There always are. I walked back home knowing I had only reached a few and that the rest would go on as before, quiet and unvisited. The smallness of the gesture was not lost on me. Neither was the smallness of my faith.

Still, on that Sunday, in one small corner, a graveyard became a garden. And one day, with faith and grace, when I am the one beneath the stone, may someone pass by with a bouquet in their hand. May they kneel where they cannot know me. May they wonder about my life, about what I believed and how I sang. May they leave something yellow against the gray. May the garden reach me, too—and may the hymn, by then, no longer be unworthy.