Tina Samples is a worship leader at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Windsor, Colorado, and a trained music therapist. Not every visit she makes is to a calm hospice room. For example:
A nurse saw Tina enter the hospital and ushered her to a patient’s room. The man was in respiratory arrest, and the nurse hoped Tina would be able to stabilize his breathing. To do this, music therapists first match the beat of the music to the heart rate. Next, the musician lowers the beats. Often, the heart rate follows.
It was real dramatic in the room. You could feel that whole tense moment of him in respiratory arrest and it wasn’t looking good at all … (His wife was) crying. Her husband was really heaving, trying to get a breath in. His body was shaking because of the respiratory arrest.
Tina finished one verse of “Amazing Grace” when the wife looked over the bed at Tina. With an intensity that couldn’t be denied, the wife blurted, “Sing ‘Jesus Loves Me.’”
“It was the most precious moment,” Tina said. “I looked over at the patient. In his anxiety, suffering and struggling to get a breath, in the middle of all of that, he could still sing with a word here or there, ‘Yes, Jesus loves me.’ And tears came flowing down his face. It was amazing because at that moment, he knew he was facing death and could say, ‘Jesus loves me. This I know.’ He passed away being sure and assured of his relationship with God.”
While ministry to the dying may not be every Christian’s calling, there is no doubt of the blessings to people who are God’s hands — and God’s song — at the end of life.
—Claudean Boatman, “Penetrating lostness: A ministry to the dying and the living,” July 14, 2006,
