(Before reading through this post; I ask you to please pause the music at the top of this page just under the menu bar.)
Though it was only rehersal,
It was a sacred time;
The Lord came near.
One of those times when you can almost feel Him;
We just knew He was there.
The quiet man with the guitar in his hands,
played an old familiar melody;
But not one I had ever heard in a church.
As the words came to mind, I sang them out.
And Memory? She began to wake up.
I was asked to grab a hymnal and read Psalm 40 aloud.
I uttered words into a microphone,
And Memory caused the voice to tremble and the eyes to fill.
And all of a sudden,
Something that took place a long time ago;
Finally made sense.
::
Twenty-five years ago, my junior year;
Standing in the dark of night in front of my high school;
Watching red and white lights flash their rhythmic warning;
Fire trucks and ambulances littering the road.
Bits and pieces of my best friend’s car scattered on pavement.
My hands shaking… uncontrollably…
Actually… all of me was shaking.
She’d been studying at the public library next to the school.
She was on her way home.
She was on her way Home.
::
The room was over-flowing with teenagers dressed in black;
Whose hearts were aching and eyes pleaded silently heaven-ward, “Why?”
The man in the pulpit quoted the chorus of a song by a popular top 40 secular rock band.
“How long to sing this song?”, he asked.
I don’t remember a whole lot that happened in the days just before and in the days following;
Everything was all pretty much a blur.
But that quote? That I remember in crisp focus.
::
When I came to Christ in my twenties, I did so in a church where the leadership abhorred anything “up beat and secular”. So automatically, knowing nothing different, I obediently put that straight-jacket on and conformed my opinions to stay tightly drawn.
When I did so, I looked back at that funeral message based on a song by U2 as offensive. I puffed up with what I was told was “righteous indignation” and I wondered, “Why on earth would he do that?”
But last night?
I finally ‘got’ it.
Though way back when, I owned the album,
I guess I never really listened to the words of the song nor did I seek to understand them.
But now?
It is clear as the blue sky…
Bono was sharing the gospel through his music;
He never labelled his group a “christian” band.
I was too blind to see it back then
but by Grace I now can see.
The song “40” is based on (almost verbatim) Psalm 40 of God’s own Holy Writ.
Someone shared with me that Michael W. Smith did a version of it too. I went looking for the Michael W. Smith song on youtube this morning, and I stumbled upon a video recorded at a U2 concert. It was titled “Yahweh & 40”. I took a moment and sat and watched and listened
…and worshipped the Lord along with Bono.
Please do take a few minutes and truly listen.
Don’t let preconceived ideas stop you.
Step out of any box you may be in
if only for a moment,
and hear every word sung…
as an offering to God.
That old familiar melody? …has new meaning in my life.
Walking in new Light today.
Linking up with Emily today. Click on over and read the other Imperfect Prose on “Light”.
