I have this habit of turning random songs into love songs from God. It started with Nickelback’s "Far Away" in college (I love you/I have loved you all along/And I forgive you/For being away for far too long/So keep breathing/'Cause I'm not leaving) and again with Taylor Swift’s "You Belong With Me" (I'm the one who makes you laugh/When you know you're 'bout to cry./And I know your favorite songs,/And you tell me 'bout your dreams./Think I know where you belong,/Think I know it's with me).
Most recently it is the previously mentioned "Closer" by Shawn McDonald.
I often find the praise songs I really like sound a little hollow when I sing them because, while I want to be head over heals in love with my Savior, most days I just don’t feel it. However I know, based on the multitudes of Scripture, that He does feel that way every day. And being reminded of that does make me love Him more.
"Closer" (on top of being a song where I can pray about being closer to God, and where I can be reminded that my place is to be closer to those in need) has become a sort of back-and-forth between me and God.
First I tell him how my life just isn’t complete. Regardless of whether I’m popping antidepressants and guzzling multiple bloody marys at 8am to forget the previous night, or whether I’m having the time of my life, it’s true: there’s always that something that is hovering just on the horizon. The thing that whispers that there’s more to life, that this world is my home but is not my homeland. I look for the impossible, I look for great satisfaction from things that are too tiny to grant it:
looking for color in a shade of grey
looking for love in a drop of rain
trying to find change from the old mundane
but everything i do just feels the same
spending my life out in the desert
been gone so long feels like forever
And in my searching for that something extra, that echo from the motherland, that thing that will complete my life, He offers Himself because He looooooooooooves me:
i just want to be closer to you
i just want to be closer
i am yours
you can have all of me, anything, everything
i just want to be closer
a day without you is a thousand years
a day without you is a million tears
I continue to share the questions that I have and to which I also have the intellectual-Bible-college-graduate answers, but no answers that are actually satisfying. I’m too tired and run-down from the day to day living to think with my battered and poisoned heart:
tell me why do i run when i am in fear
why do i run when you are so near
been spending my life out in the weather
been gone so long and i need some shelter
And He says He’ll be that shelter. That He just wants to be with me. It's not that He wants to schedule a meeting so He can go over His laundry list of things He wants me to do/fix in my life, He just wants to spend time with me. He wants to be inseperable:
i just want to be closer to you
i just want to be closer
i am yours
you can have all of me, anything, everything
i just want to be closer
wherever you go, wherever you are
i just want to be there with you
i just want to be closer to you
i just want to be closer
i am yours
you can have all of me, anything, everything
i just want to be closer
And then in the echoing ending of the song I can hear Him saying He looks for the impossible in me, and He looks for a grand love from a creature too tiny to return His feelings with the same magnitude. But instead of being weary about it like I am, He finds an adventure and is confident He can find what He’s looking for in me.
looking for color in a shade of grey
looking for love in a drop of rain
Anyway, I know that’s not at all what Shawn McDonald had in mind when he wrote the song, but whatevs. I heard an artist on the radio last night say their favorite part of writing music is to learn the songs have taken on a life of their own and mean totally different things to different people. So maybe it’s ok.
No comments:
Post a Comment