Music Mondays

As I write this...the coronavirus continues to increase.
As I write this...we continue to wrestling the raw reality of racism.
As I write this...the uncertainty and unrest hover/hang in the air.
As I write this...people are struggling to make ends meet.
As I write this...it is raining outside.

Why would I post a video of U2's, "It's a Beautiful Day"?

Here are the opening words:

The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There's no room
No space to rent in this town
You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere

It actually starts off as a lament.  I am particularly taken by the line that the reason you had to care is no longer there.  When we feel stuck and stymied ~ stuck and stymied by a invisible illness and racism made painfully clear by countless videos.  Stuck and stymied by how we can respond?  Stuck and stymied by a systems that continue to hurt and harm people.  Stuck and stymied by life that no longer the way we wanted it to me. 

To lament is to offer our protest to God.  To lament is to give voice to the pain that swirls and surges within our soul.  To lament is heart and honest place where we can begin to name what is within us and around.  Lament is holy.

In that sacred space, we do start to see hope and moments of healing.  Hope is like a flashlight, even when what we are seeing is difficult and gut-wrenching, we are seeing it.  Seeing it might help us deal with it.  Dealing with it might mean that the brokenness would be mended, healing might happen. 

Or as the song says:

You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace

To connect with another.  To let our lives be woven together, especially if that person doesn't see the world in the same way I do.

I love the line near the end:

I know I'm not a hopeless case

That is a prayer of hope, persistence, and patience.
That is a sense that if God hasn't given up on me, then I shouldn't give up on this life, then this just might be a beautiful day.

Prayer: God let me see the ways You are still crafting and creating with traces of grace around and within me.  Amen.