12 The Least of These Some years ago, when I was in the midst of an intellectual and spiritual abyss, I was visiting the family of one of my students, in the Georgetown area of the nation’s capital. There in the parlor was the one thing that could draw me out of the desert: a piano. Now, you have to stretch the verb “play” in my case, and the piano was out of tune, but I sat there and began to play “God of Grace and God of Glory,” when two of the daughters came down from upstairs. They had shining eyes. One had taken a small violin and was playing the high note in the melody. The other was singing at the top of her lungs. It was a glorious moment, and my host was beaming with delight. His daughters had Down Syndrome. “They love music,” he said, egging them on, while I started to play a new melody and the girls caught it and adjusted accordingly. We were happy and silly at once. That buoyed my spirits indeed—it is always a sweet thing to be near people whom God has blessed even in and by affliction. And my confusions of intellect began to fade away like bad dreams.
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