Heartbreaking Hymn

This is a story about Mark Hall, the lead singer of Casting Crowns. I love their music and it has helped me a lot with what happened to you. There was an article about him on Faithit today. He recently found out that he had cancer. Here are some excerpts from the article:

"Though he spent his whole life uplifting other and singing the goodness of God, Mark realized he was now being put to the ultimate test. Could he really live out the faith he'd been preaching on a public stage all of these years as a worship leader and a pastor?"

"In a podcast last month, Hall shared that staying grounded in his faith and the healing hand of God helped him to press through the difficult journey."

"My feelings kept slamming up against something solid in me, and that was the roots of my faith,
he said. The fact that I've been in the Word for years. The fact that I've been following Jesus for years, and the roots of my faith were reminding me: God is who He says He is."

"All of these things you've ever read and believed and trusted are true. It doesn't stop being true just because this took you by surprise," he added, referencing David's questions in Psalm 43:5, Why art thou cast down O my soul?"

"I think sometimes when we're caught by surprise we feel like maybe God's caught by surprise, said Hall. But He's at the end of my life looking back on it. So I've got to remind myself of that."

"You never speak louder to the world about your faith than when you're in a storm, said Hall. For me, I knew I'd taught a lot of lessons. I've written books, I've written songs, but I'm about to tell the world a whole lot through what happens in the next months."

"Overall the tragedy taught Hall a profound lesson and a lasting message that he feels is so important to share with this broken world where we find it hard to reconcile suffering with God's goodness:

When we have a friend who's suffering, we feel like we need to fix it. We feel like we need to defend God, make sure they're not mad at God and give them a bunch of reason why God's still good. That's probably not what they need. They just need you to be there, listen to them, cry with them. You don't have to be the answers to all of life's questions.

I've always tried to give that advice to my own students, but the other half of that that I learned is when you're hurting, you need to let the church be the church. They're not always going to say it right but the root of it is love. You have to realize you can't walk through it by yourself, you need people walking through it with you."