SOUNDTRACK OF FAITH
We’re here to study and write, leaning into the sounds of silence together, my man and I. Books and iPads, hot tea and coffee ready, we hope to hear from God. Like Moses outside the camp, but with Sonny’s BBQ instead of manna. The flame in the propane heater is no burning bush, though. We need to hear from God.
As always, our processes are polar opposites: While I immediately dive into research and outlines, he breathes calmly and stares into realms known only to him. Like a swimmer with goggles, I tune out the world to focus, while he splashes outside any lanes I can see, to the rhythms from his ever-present Bluetooth speakers.
I squint my eyes and cover my ears, trying to redirect my thoughts from his music to the messages waiting to be mined here. Dictionaries and commentaries call for quiet immersion, but splashes of melodies and poetries keep teasing me up to the surface.
I see sunshine dancing in my man’s rugged face. His thoughts seem freed in this breezy place of quiet solitude, his eyes alive. He doesn’t know I’m looking. I open my clenched hands and allow my own disciplined plan to sink….
Somehow, that opens my soul to the intimate memories tucked into these melodies that have become our soundtrack.
“All to Jesus I, I surrender all
Humbly at His feet I bow
Pleasures of this world, I would gladly trade
Take it all Lord, take me now”
Fresh enough still to be raw, I remember shouting my despair from hormone hallucinations into the rising drums of Jesus Culture’s I Surrender All. My voice broke. Feverish fears screamed through me. But somehow that song became a prayer that carried me through the surge to saner shores.
“Mercy roars like hurricane winds
Furious love laid waste to my sin”
Her angelic voice carries me back to December’s windblown fields in Denmark, where we drove endlessly though idyllic villages with candlelit farmhouses, my old regrets nowhere to be found. Decades of mercy roaring through my life shattered the straw structures of false identities and counterfeit relationships and established something solid, eternal instead, “so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.”
“The constellations are swimming inside
The breadth of Your desire
Where could I run, where could I hide
From Your heart’s jealous fire
All treasures of wisdom and things to be known
Are hidden inside your hand
And in this fortunate turn of events
You ask me to be Your friend”
Such understatement in the masculine words of John Mark MacMillan! This “fortunate turn of events” is the miracle of my life! And even that is a microscopic expression of the thunderous, sacrificial Love that created this Paradise, corrupted though it may now be.
Through the screens of the back porch, I see the sun setting on another Sunday. The ordinary, wrapped in golden light.
As song after song washes over me, I hear the ancient duet between the Lover and the Beloved. Wave after wave of human prayers and experiences rising in crescendo and then crashing against the unwavering shore of His reality.
I can’t say that I heard from God. I don’t even know that I feel Him. Extended somewhere between faith and sight, riding these melodic memories, a peaceful awareness that He is here.
“In the process
In the waiting
You’re making melodies over me
And your presence
is the promise
For I am a pilgrim on a journey
You will lift my head above the mighty waves
You are able to keep me from stumbling
And in my weakness
You are the strength that comes from within
Good shepherd of my soul
Take my hand and lead me on”
“The Lord your God in your midst,
The Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
He will quiet you with His love,
He will rejoice over you with singing.”
