Songs by seekers and doubters can sometimes tell us the straight truth about life. They can give us a way to look at our experiences to seek and long for God’s presence in broken places. There is a crack in everything and everyone, but that’s how light can get in.
When it seems like everything is broken it’s hard to see the light in broken lives, but songs and psalms can help us to see light at the end of the tunnel, the light to healing, restoration, and a path to peace.
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:18
For this is what the high and exalted One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy:
“I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,
to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. Isaiah 57:15
“In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There’s a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair
In the fury of the moment, I can see the master’s hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand
I gaze into the doorway of temptation’s angry flame
And every time I pass that way, I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey, I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand
I’m hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand. – Bob Dylan
Our lives can be full of contradiction and consequence. Yet, every hair is numbered and every life matters to God, even those who some have written off and forgotten.
“Inside the church, there are creeds and baptisms, there’s communion and the unfailing truth of scripture, and there’s a shared life in Christ of belonging to the family of God. But, outside the church, God’s voice is speaking too: along the roadsides, in classrooms, and cubicles where we work and live.” Sandra McCracken And even in prisons.
The writer of Hebrews tells us that in these last days, God speaks to us by his Son (Hebrews 1:2). Today, when we listen to others around us, we discover that God is still speaking to us in this world that he has made and every part of that belongs to him (Psalm 24).
If we shut our ears and eyes to all those who are outside our comfort places, we risk missing what God is doing in people’s lives even in seemingly forgotten places, like prisons.
Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Hebrews 13:3
Can we say long with Bob Dylan, “I need a shot of love”?
