I'd hate to be Pharrell right now!

First of all, I must thank my dear wife, who told me when I got home from work tonight, "Look at this!" She was watching the latest episode of The Voice on Hulu.com. Since confession is good for the soul, I must confess that I'm a true convert of The Voice. My wife is also mostly to blame for this. Little did I know I was about to watch a magical and rare moment on national TV and by magical I should clarify that divine would be a better word to describe it.

This was the stage in the show called the battle round, where the coach, Pharrell Williams in this case, selected a song for two of his strongest team members so that they could showcase their singing and performing chops for the audience to see. The voice coach then has to chose one of the two no matter how good both might be. One stays, one goes home. The team members in the song battle were Mark Hood from Chicago, Il. and Celeste Betton from Hinesville, GA, and bam! Did they perfom or what! Pharrell Williams knew what he was doing when he put this song in the voices of these two. The song chosen was Ain't No Mountain High Enough, a 1967 Top 20 smash hit originally sung by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.

The moment the music started playing the magic unfolded. You could see it in the faces of the coaches, all of them. You could see it in the joyful jumping and clapping to the beat in the audience. I don't know how many miles away and how many days removed from the live performance I happened to be, but I could feel it through the sound and bytes displaying on the screen thanks to the Interwebs streaming.

This was no duel till death were one contestant went on a silly display of one upmanship versus the other. These two performers fed off each other symbiotically. They lifted each other up, instead of singing against the other, and ended up giving us a powerhouse of a performance. It was plainly, simply a beautiful thing to witness. That's why it was magical! The whole studio was abuzz with the performance and that's when it dawn on me. Knowing that the coach would have to "kill" one of his most talented, skilled and strongest voices at the end of the song, I thought to myself "I'd hate to be Pharrell right now!"

Before Pharrell's verdict came down, the other coaches gave their input at the end of the song. I'll just quote them for you here.

   "That was my favorite battle that I've ever seen", Gwen Stefani.
   "You both lit this place up and we all felt every second of it", Adam Levine.
   "So, what are you gonna do, little buddy?" said Blake Sheldon well knowing the jam Pharrell had put himself into.
   "I made a mistake by putting you guys together 'cause I don't want to lose either one of you" said the torn coach, Pharrell Williams.

Then came the moment one would think gathers the highest tension in the show, the moment of decision. The coach has to give a thumps up and only one, giving in turn a thumps down to the other contestant. And I'd tell you that moment was when Pharrell chose Mark over Celeste save that it wasn't. In any other battle round that would have been the case, but not in this one. Amigos, this was a real tough choice to make. Did I mention that "I hate to be Pharrell right now"?

The thing with this performance was that its most climactic moment didn't arrive until after Mark, the lucky winner of this battle round, was gone from the stage. Pharrell left his chair, embraced Mark and congratulated him, and then went over to Celeste. Acknowledging the amazing talent he was letting go, he bowed. It was pretty painful. Carson Daly, the show's host, then asked her if there was anything she'd like to tell Pharrell. And right there and then she began to say "Just thank you..." before breaking out singing one of most powerful hymns ever.

"Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul."

And this was, for me, the highest moment, the climax, of the whole episode. A moment not eclipsed by self-pity or denial, but exalted by gratefulness and song, another very worshipful song that told the hundreds present in the audience and the millions watching on TV, "I'm content." Imagine that! You're on the biggest stage, a Hollywood stage mind you, and you're hungry, very hungry to make it. But you don't. What would your reaction be? What would be mine? Would it be contentment "whatever my lot"? I doubt it. And there it was for all of us to see with an evident self-possession and the assurance that the Lord's will had been done. Her own words were words from the hymn, "It's well. It's well."

Beyond magical, that's what made the moment divine. I think God wanted it to be so. My best guess is that God doesn't watch TV that much, but He knows we do. So every now and then He shows up on the screen interrupting the entertainment stupor in which we don't know we find ourselves and tells us "I'm still here, in case you haven't noticed." For those moments, He prefers to use humble and collected people. People serene like heaven and not ironically named Celeste.

7 Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - Ain't no Mountain High Enough' from MNHTTN on Vimeo.