Today I felt like I was in high school again.
This morning, on the drive to school, I reached back (literally and figuratively) in the car to the cd case that holds all of the old music. The music I don't listen to very often at all, things from the early 2000s, when life was different for me. This kind of music doesn't take me to a specific place in my memory. It's more of a feeling. To a time when I was a much younger Christian, and I realize lately, must less jaded about the world. Everyone says that. But it's true. You're different when you're young. There's a disparity I feel in this fervor and life and Spirit-filled way that I used to live. And what I live out now.
I think I'm facing that sadness. I also think it's ok because I have turned my face to the beautiful way out of it.
It also felt like high school because today we can wear jeans to work. And I cannot accurately express in words the relief I feel about this. I love dresses and beautiful things, but wearing jeans, especially when I still had to write a test before 9:30 never seemed so good.
I was looking for Jars of Clay, and specifically one of their albums, the one called 'The Eleventh Hour'. I found the cd, heard the first few strains of the song, and was just taken aback. An early me, one that listened and prayed and knew these songs by heart, came achingly back to the heart conversations of this day. Right here. Right now.
It felt like a confession, like a reminder that these lyrics aren't just for a season for me. Or for any sinner's heart. They're for always, for the days when you feel just about right and when you don't. When your heart posture is humble and aching for God, and when you're too arrogant to see straight and need to be put in your place. This week, no surprise really, I have been both.
I asked God to break me this week. (I prayed this with a knowingness about how things might be in the next little while. He'll DO it. I know the feeling. But I need it.) God IS doing it, and creatively. I think He is starting with songs.
One thing I love about God is that He is poetic, and knows peoples' hearts. Even the people who don't think God is poetic. He's tracing the lines of their heart every day too.
And guess what? God talks to me with words. Always always the fascination with words. I love them. I think God is in verbs and nouns and adjectives and fonts and signatures and book titles and book dedications and signs. So today when I heard the music, I saw the words flash across my mind and some of them were in bold. The lyrics to the song I needed to hear are below. And the words in bold are the ones that are big for me.
Trace the shape of my heart
Till it becomes more familiar
To your eyes
I've been lost without you
Cold without your love
It's taken days and nights
To make me realize
Rescue me from hanging on this line
I won't give up on giving you
The chance to blow my mind
Let the eleventh hour quickly
Pass me by
I'll find you when I think
I'm out of time
Take the place of my heart
Till I become a stranger to my life
I've been down without you
Wrong without your love
In time will I be what
You're thinking of
I've been down without you
Cold without your love
In time will I be what
You're thinking of
Doesn't this all speak of the continuing work of God? Yes, I definitely think so too.
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