Flash back to the eighties! The era of hair bands...leg warmers...music videos...and sit coms. Ahhh, the decade that shaped me. While I didn't listen to Peter Gabriel as a kids, but increasingly I have found his lyrics moving and meaningful. The above song for Music Mondays is, "In Your Eyes". The opening verse goes:
Love I get so lost, sometimes
Days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
When I want to run away
I drive off in my car
But whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are
Those words capture and captivate my heart. I have felt lost and empty heart-ed in the face of the world today. Lost amid a virus that has made me afraid, closed off our sanctuary for in-person worship, upended my life, caused economic upheaval, and so many people to die. Empty heart-ed when I turn on the news to see endless bickering and divisiveness, when African-Americans are killed at an alarming rate (both by the virus and police), when we don't feel safe. I get why Peter sings about wanting to drive off - somewhere/anywhere! But the wonderful turn, that whichever we go, there God is!
God is the one whose center is everywhere and circumference is boundless.
Everywhere.
The refrain of the song goes:
In your eyes
The light the heat
In your eyes
I am complete
In your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches
In your eyes
The resolution of all the fruitless searches
In your eyes
I see the light and the heat
In your eyes
Oh, I want to be that complete
For me that is a prayer...that in God's eyes there is a light and heat - warmth. In God's eyes, I am complete (even with all my foibles). In God's eyes there can be resolutions to my fruitless searches.
I invite you to hear this song as a prayer for this day and this week. And may you sense more than a trace of God's grace...and may God's love surround you more than ever.
Blessings ~~
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What has been getting me through these difficult times has been songs done by The Jive Aces - a British swing group. Things like "Smile", "Lovin' Life and Life's Lovin' Me", "Be My Sunshine" "When You're Smilin'" , Mike's favorite - "I Love to Eat", and on and on. With their upbeat style and great words, any time I've been down in the dumps, we go for a ride in my car with one of their CDs blasting on the stereo. Yeah, the songs are older than me, but they still have great messages. They have lots of videos on You Tube and are doing live shows most every day during the shutdown.
ReplyDeleteI will warn you, however, once they get you groovin' and dancin' around, everyone else will not understand where you are coming from at all. I've gotten a lot of flak for being "too happy" and not in a panic. I've told people that I also use the 23rd & 91st Psalm to keep me grounded, and if I can't trust in the Lord to take care of me, who can I trust?