Expressing the Inexpressible — Love Song to My Life

Of all the cardinal claims of the Christian Faith, the Incarnation, from start to finish, is the most immense for believers to wrap our minds around. That God himself would choose to actually come to be born as one of us, to live and walk and die with us, takes indeed, a leap of faith.

The rough-sawn wooden bookends of this carpenter’s life—from manger to the cross—redefine symbol and icon. Just wood—not gold or silver or jewels or fine, rare fabrics—but just wood, becomes the symbol of an invitation that would exclude no one. That we could know God came to embrace us all. And this Son-of-God Christ debunked so many centuries-old conceptions of who this God is and what were His actual characteristics.

No longer haunted by a fear-based faith, we are invited to move in closer, trust deeper, and accept a new revelation: while we thought we had to do outlandish things to approach this God, He had instead been pursuing us all along. Instead of wrath and anger being his earmarks, this God has all along been wanting to transform us by love, a love that has the power to pull us in, allow us to be honest, give us the energy of an on-going resurrection. Yes! Easter everywhere! New us! New way of seeing! New joy beyond common human perception! New revelation—Life is everywhere! The death-pull is broken.

Fortunately, and maybe miraculously, those who knew this Jesus, wrote down what He said and did. In letters, in conversation, in hindsight and foresight, they wrote it down. From wildly different viewpoints, they told the story. A doctor and a teen-ager, a conniving tax collector and some common commercial fishermen--they told of everyday friendship with this new definition of God.

Yet there was so much to the story that in the end, they threw up their hands in despair at their limited ability to tell it all. “It would take a library of books to tell it!” they said.

And writers and witnesses have tried ever since to tell their own personal resurrection stories. I, myself, have tried. But words are inadequate. How does one “bear witness” to an internal Easter, a discovery that there is eternity in every moment, an ongoing resurrection?

I have tried in speech and in prose. But perhaps the story—the big story of God-with-us—can best be told in poetry, because in poetry more of the story is between the lines than on the lines. Poetry is about the something else, the something that can only be an inkling of something eternal, something transcendent.

Marry that poetry to the right music, and the something else of a story can by-pass our temptation to analyze, and go straight to the eternity of our souls.

This song lyric I wrote twice. After the first version, Bill decided on a totally different musical direction. So, I wrote this story again. Here are both attempts to tell a story beyond words. Yet, I will try again...and again...and again.

THEN CAME THE MORNING (original lyric)

They had sealed His broken body in a half-way finished tomb,
And even that was loaned them by a friend.
Then they spent the endless hours wondering
who would be the next
And why things so perfect had to end.
And if it weren’t enough to haunt them that their hopes
and dreams were gone,
Shattered by the hammer and some nails,
The silent accusation of the fear that gripped their hearts
Made a farce of everything He’d told them from the start.

They said now that it was over she should go and get some rest.
She was sure they all had meant well with their words,
But for her it wasn’t over; it would never, never be!
Her child would always be alive to her.
The things that she had stored away there deep within her breast
Paraded back and forth across her mind--
From the moment she had felt this baby leap within her womb
She’d known somehow that life could not be sealed up in a tomb.
It seemed I’d gone forever without a ray of hope,
My prayers just echoed empty down the hall.
The statements that I made returned at night to question me,
And no one seemed to answer when I called.
Music, the joy, and all the friends I had were gone,
And all I had to hold to were His words
That promised to be with me and never let me go,
So that is what I held to;
It was all that I could know.
Sometimes we meet together in our cloistered upper rooms;
We drink the wine and share the broken bread,
And promise one another to be true unto the end
To all the things our Lord and Master said.
And yet, when we are facing the dark times of our lives,
Those “Hallelujahs” seem so far away.
Our failures and our humanness is all we see or hear,
And all our best intentions seem to melt and disappear.
But when the final word is spoken, and the last farewell is said,
And gone is all our chance to sell or buy.
When the last child is delivered and the last soul laid to rest,
And all the tears are shed we’ll ever have to cry.
When the sands of time have sifted through the minutes and the days,
What’s done is done and what is said is said,
Just before the music fades from all our songs of faith and hope,
A trumpet blast will bring the shout of victory, and we’ll know –
Death has lost! Life has won!
And morning, morning has come!

THEN CAME THE MORNING (Version 2)

They all walked away, there was nothin' to say--
They'd just lost their dearest Friend;
All that He’d said, now He was dead--
So this was the way it would end.
The dreams they had dreamed
Were not what they'd seemed
Now that He was dead and gone;
The garden, the jail, the hammer, the nail--
How could a night be so long?

The angel, the star, the kings from afar,
The wedding, the water, the wine--
Now it was done; they'd taken her Son,
Wasted before His time.
She knew it was true;
She'd watched Him die, too;
She'd heard them call Him just a man,
But deep in her heart she knew from the start
Somehow her Son would live again....
CHORUS
Then came the morning!
Night turned into day,
The stone was rolled away;
Hope rose with the dawn!
Then came the morning!
Shadows vanished before the sun--
Death had lost and life had won,
For morning had come!

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