From the recording Time Gives Way
I’ve known my share of hurts, some I’ve received and some I’ve inflicted. In the consequent mess and grief in either case, my struggle is to make the pain constructive. And to slap myself awake when I drift into the warm arms of bitterness and blame. Arms that become chains.
Here are two things that have helped me. I try to look at Jesus Christ dying on the cross. So gory, I know. So Catholic. But when I observe the nails ripping through his wrists, the dead weight of his flayed body tearing flesh over iron, and the blood-darkened hair curled over the mocking thorns – then, ironically, I find a resting place for my own raw pain. His suffering gives me relevance. He felt ripped up, cheated and left behind. He’s hard at work straightening out my and everyone else’s failures. But he never makes light of my pain or tells me I’m a wuss though he’d have every right. Instead He’s there with it. And then he looks at me with his clear eyes and offers to hold it for a while. He alone has capacity.
Second, I repeat the long term promise: Things are going to be better than you can imagine. Isaiah foretold: “The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the Lord binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.’ Though it looks improbable, a seed is entombed not for death but for life – it will be unpredictably transformed and multiplied. Jesus, the second try at humankind, broke out of doom to the More and so will I.
There is going to be a time of payout and payback either in this life or the next. The intensity of goodness, healing, justice, vindication and companionship will be out of this world. It will blind even the best-sighted. It will make your brightest day to date seem like February in Chicago. Come on, light, light, light.
Lyrics
man of sorrows take me up / not what I wish, I brace the cup / I’m a walking shadow whispering prayer / but all that's here you remember
second Adam make me brave / seed for breaking from this grave / all my pieces on the floor but what’s passed is yours now forever
your voice behind me near, I won’t wander / you’ll turn my darkness into day, a day like no other
brighter when you heal my wounds / you take the blame and wear my bruise / eyes years burned blind finally find wrong turned to right / in seven times the light
we need a little more light / give us a little more light / light, light, light / we need a little more light / give us a little more light / light, light, light
God of justice take me up / perfect love I bless your cup / when you buried every score / you opened the door to forever / brighter when you heal our wounds / you break the chain and bind the bruise…
Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved someone like me / I once was lost but now am found / was blind but now I see / I’ll see it when I believe it, I’ll see it when I believe it / light, light, light