I awoke with my brain buzzing. Anxiety high. Rumination on autopilot. Past scenes replaying in a loop.
As I layed there in the dark, transported back into a painful season, I also remembered a song that I came across in that same time period:
May loving kindness
Calm the raging of the wound
May your healing
Be a clearing in the wood
May you breathe in
Deeper than you ever could before
—Audrey Assad, “Shiloh”
Faith forms us into people who carry songs into the dark. Not necessarily songs that make the darkness disappear, but songs that remind us who our real Master is.
We spend enormous amounts of energy trying to make our circumstances feel permanent:
- our house
- our job
- our church
- our circle of friends
- our neighborhood
- our health
- our plans for the future
But everything is temporary. We’re only passing through, and sometimes the night is especially dark. Yet songs can bubble up that anchor us to a deeper reality. A deeper law. A deeper magic (as C.S. Lewis called it). A deeper love.
(See Psalm119:49-56).