Since the pandemic, I have regularly visited our local hospital as a volunteer chaplain. Most weeks I spend an afternoon at the bedside of patients and listening to hospital staff members speak of their experience of life in this season. I offer no answers for the suffering and the loss. No explanations of what God is or isn’t doing in the midst of their pain. Instead, I listen. I care deeply. I grieve with some of them.
Most days I bring my guitar. Most of what I play is instrumental music to bring peace to weary and anxious souls. Occasionally I sing a song with words. Once or twice it was this one.
Deep and wide
Deep and wide
There’s a fountain flowing
Deep and Wide
Deep and wide
Deep and wide
There’s a fountain flowing
Deep and Wide
In the desert of our doubt
And the cave of our despair
Where the flame of hope burns out
A fountain flows
In the aching in the soul
And the waiting in the dark
Through the hope to be made whole
A fountain flows
Wide and deep
Wide and deep
There’s a river running
Wide and deep
Wide and deep
Wide and deep
There’s a river running
Wide and deep
Through the endlessness of grief
Through the longing and the loss
And the deep enduring peace
A river runs
Through the number of our days
And the passing of our years
Till we finally see Love’s face
A river runs
Deep and wide
Deep and wide
There’s a fountain flowing
Deep and Wide
Deep and wide
Deep and wide
There’s a fountain flowing
Deep and Wide
words & music by Sydney Cox & Mark Beazley
* Sydney Cox was a major in the Salvation Army early in the 20th century. He wrote the familiar children’s chorus as a hymn complete with versus.