John Killinger, the famous pastor and author, tells this story about a haunting moment: "Somewhere in my journals there is an entry about how strongly it hit me one day as I was sitting in the chancel of a church, waiting to deliver the guest sermon. A beautiful woman was playing a violin solo. Her lovely hands worked continuously at the frets and the bow, evoking the most soulful music I thought I had ever heard. There was a rose pinned in her exquisitely coiffed hair. I was transported.

"Then a dark thought crossed my mind, as if it had been a cloud passing between me and the sun. In a few years the woman would become old. The rose in her hair would die. Her soft hands would be gnarled and wrinkled by age. She would stop playing the instrument. She would be confined to a bed or a wheelchair. Then she, too, would die.

"The music brought me back again to a realization of how beautiful it was. But I did not recover from the image of the violinist as an old woman. It haunted me for days."