I love how God speaks into my life, not only through his Word, but through other artistic mediums as well, especially music. There is a song written by Sting that I first heard at his concert in Seoul years ago, ‘Dead Man’s Rope’. It really got to me at the time and it gets to me every time I hear it because it is my story, including ‘the hand of an angel reaching down above my bed’. I was reminded of it again this morning…
‘Dead Man’s Rope’ by Sting (Click on the link)
A million footsteps, this left foot drags behind my right
But I keep walking, from daybreak til the falling night
And as days turn into weeks and years
And years turn into lifetimes
I just keep walking, like I’ve been walking for a thousand years
Walk away in emptiness, walk away in sorrow,
Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow,
If you’re walking to escape, to escape from your affliction
You’d be walking in a great circle, a circle of addiction
Did you ever wonder what you’d been carrying since the world was black?
You see yourself in a looking glass with a tombstone on your back
Walk away in emptiness, walk away in sorrow,
Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow,
Walk away in anger, walk away in pain
Walk away from life itself, walk into the rain
All this wandering has led me to this place
Inside the well of my memory, sweet rain of forgiveness
I’m just hanging here in space
Now I’m suspended between my darkest fears and dearest hope
Yes I’ve been walking, now I’m hanging from a dead man’s rope
With Hell below me, and Heaven in the sky above
I’ve been walking, I’ve been walking away from Jesus’ love
Walk away in emptiness, walk away in sorrow,
Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow,
Walk away in anger, walk away in pain
Walk away from life itself, walk into the rain
All this wandering has led me to this place
Inside the well of my memory, sweet rain of forgiveness
I’m just hanging here in space
The shadows fall
Around my bed
When the hand of an angel,
The hand of an angel is reaching down above my head
All this wandering has led me to this place
Inside the well of my memory, sweet rain of forgiveness
Now I’m walking in his grace
I’m walking in his footsteps
Walking in his footsteps,
Walking in his footsteps
All the days of my life I will walk with you
All the days of my life I will talk with you
All the days of my life I will share with you
All the days of my life I will bear with you
Walk away from emptiness, walk away from sorrow,
Walk away from yesterday, walk away tomorrow,
Walk away from anger, walk away from pain
Walk away from anguish, walk into the rain.
I have a choice to make every day… whether I walk into emptiness, sorrow, pain, anger, and from life itself … or into the abundant life Jesus offers… walking away from emptiness, sorrow, pain, anger, and into life itself, through his sweet rain of forgiveness.
I was reminded this morning of the wonderful verses in Psalm 139:5-6 … ‘I look behind me and you’re there, then up ahead, and you’re there, too…Your reassuring presence, coming and going. This is too much, too wonderful…I can’t take it all in!’ (The Message).
And it came to me that as I ‘walk in His footsteps’ into the future that He has already prepared for me, He is also behind me, brushing away, with his hand, the footprints left behind that are dirty and polluted… much like a mother cleans up her child’s muddy tracks from the kitchen floor after a time outside … the addictions, the sin, the filth of my life … things that have nothing to do with how He created me to be, but are, instead, just ‘filler’ for the one truth for which my soul truly longs. And that even now, in this present moment, He is cleaning the years of accumulated dirt off my feet. (‘You hem me in and behind, and you lay your hand upon me.’ … NIV)
Ah, SWEET rain of forgiveness…
I love the picture above that I took during a rainstorm on a recent trip to Guatemala. I love how the raindrop forms a sort of chalice… there’s a certain irony that I enjoy… it looks as if we could fill that very chalice of water with water… I think of how Jesus offers himself to us as ‘living water’, to fill our very souls with the things of eternal value. But, because we are broken vessels, the things of this world, our ‘circles of addiction’ that we think will fill our lives, fill our chalice … yes, they may fill us for a moment, but ultimately, they just seep through the cracks of our broken lives, leaving us even emptier, wanting even more … more food, more drink, more gadgets, more internet, more television, more noise, more clothes, more ‘love’… more, more… MORE!
In this crazy world which batters us with messages that more stuff, more experiences, more everything will satisfy, I know, with absolute certainty, that as Sting put it in his song… in the ‘well of my memory’ … the ‘memory’ that God placed in me when he ‘knit me in my mother’s womb’, and which, at times seems so difficult to tap, there is ‘living water’ that… through connection, through prayer, and through surrender and reliance on Him, will always fill my soul… will satisfy my thirst like nothing else ever could. I KNOW this!!
…. ‘Ah, too wonderful for me to take in!!’
‘Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’ (Psalm 139:23, 24) … as I walk into Your footsteps lain before me… away from sorrow, away from pain, away from emptiness, away from anger, away from endless ‘circles of addiction’ and need…
… into Your sweet rain of forgiveness.
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