I Think It's Going to Rain Today

Human kindness is overflowing and I think it’s going to rain today. “I Think It’s Going to Rain Today”, Randy Newman

In August of 1973 I transferred as a junior to Samford University from my junior college, the Enterprise State Junior College in Enterprise, Alabama. Samford is a liberal arts college in Birmingham. I  had been accepted to a choir before I was accepted to Samford.  But very soon I was accepted to Samford.  This choir had an annual fall choir camp at Shocco Spings Baptist Assembly in Talladega, Alabama the weekend before classes started. A search committee from the New Prospect Baptist Church in Jasper, Alabama drove to Talladega to interview a student to become a part-time minister of music at their church. He wasn’t interested so they talked to me. The next day, a Sunday, I was in their pulpit as the prospective minister of music. I was actually at the New Prospect Baptist Church before I took my first class at Samford.

Jasper at that time was about an hour’s drive northwest of Birmingham.  Accepting that position was an immense commitment of time and energy.

The first week of school the dean  of the school music talked me from a church music degree to a music education degree. This degree was a five year degree instead of the usual four year degree.  This meant that I would have three more years of college to graduate with this degree and earn a teacher’s certificate to teach in Alabama. For three years including “Jan term” I took a full load.  My normal load was about eighteen semester hours.  This was semester hours and not quarter hours. When I wasn’t in class or in the library I was in the practice room. It was a grueling schedule.

After a few months the church bought a mobile home for me to live in on weekends.  On  Friday afternoon I would drive to Jasper to participate in my other life. In the fall I hosted a “fifth quarter huddle” for the youth after the football game. On Saturday morning I would  wash cars to raise money for our annual youth mission tour. And Saturday afternoon I would participate in bus ministry visitation. Most Saturday evenings I could call my own. Sunday included Sunday School and church, and youth choir rehearsal that afternoon and church. There was a family that took me in. A mother, a father and two teenage girls. Often I would spend time with them after church before driving back to Birmingham. I caught up with my dorm roommate and fell exhausted in my bed. On Monday morning it all started again.  On Wednesdays I would drive to Jasper where I directed three children’s choirs and the adult choir. I got back to school between 9:30 and 10:00pm.

The summer of 1974 a beautiful coed visited the New Prospect Baptist Church. She lived in Jasper and was also a student at Samford.  I had heard of her and knew that she had joined my choir at school. I had not only checked her out, but I learned that she had shown up to check me out. What started as a ride share became a friendship and became a life together.

It must have been a really good day at the church.  That night driving to pick up my girlfriend on Highway 78 East I was filled to overflowing. I don’t know when my heart had been so full of where I had been and where I was going.  I had the radio in my Mercury Capri tuned to KZ106 in Birmingham. I was listening to a live concert of I wasn’t sure who.  The introduction started to a song that would touch me, change me and become a part of the fabric of my soul. If I had been “all full up”, as my future father-in-law would say, I was now overflowing with beauty and gratitude. When the song was over the only lyrics I could remember were “Human  kindness is overflowing and I think it’s going to rain today.” Monday morning I called the station quoting those words to see if the DJ knew the song. He did not.  For five years I looked for that song and never found it.

That girlfriend had now been my wife for four years.  One night I decided to watch a movie I had bought called Beaches starring Bette Midler. My wife had already gone to bed. Deep into the movie, as soon as the introduction started, I knew the song. I was filled with tears, wonderment and gratitude that I had finally found the song.  The next morning I excitingly said, “You’ll never believe what I found last night.” And with God as my witness she said, “You found your song.” Yes, I had found my song. Or more accurately, my song had found me.

I’m still in constant touch with that couple in Jasper who are now well into their eighties.  It’s so good to reminisce and laugh about days gone by and talk about our families and our friends.  At our age we discuss more than a little bit about our health. I dread that phone call, but it’s inevitable. “Human kindness is overflowing and I think it’s going to rain today.”

Things could have ended better at the New Prospect Baptist Church. But I have visited the church and even led the music several times since then.  Sometimes life is most meaningful in the broken places. I would take nothing for my four years at that church. I have thought many times that the church became a frame that has expanded with my life. I am always inside that frame.

“Bright before me the signs implore me, help the needy and show them the way. Human kindness is overflowing and I think it’s going to rain today.”