The Plight

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All my world held in suspense.
Time breaks, nothing makes sense.
When I turn my back on You
do You hurt like this too?

Do You weep for me like Lazarus
when death takes me to the tomb?
Have we cast stones while You were writing in the dust?
Why does the bride despise the Groom?

You're the home I cannot find.
I'm the blind leading the blind.
Please, rescue these souls from me,
and if You will... please come rescue me.

Let me just hear Your voice, and know it
like a child, like a sheep.
All of the beauty in the sky, and in the earth below it
speaks, it speaks to me.

Speak, speak to me.
Lord, come and rescue me.



This is one of very few songs I've written that speaks of God and religion in a forthright way, though many other songs speak of a similar struggle less blatantly.
The melody to this song was written, I believe, while I was still in high-school, or maybe in the year after I graduated. I remember it was an early morning, and I was tired, and I sat down at my first keyboard and started recording one track on another. Some time later I refined it and re-recorded it.
That recording became what I viewed as a nice musical interlude to what would surely be an epic album someday. I called it "A Dark Prelude." I transferred it to the computer and some weeks afterwards I was messing around with reversing tracks to see how they would sound. Reversing this track, though brought to my ears something incredibly beautiful. It had an element of ambient sound to it, and yet there were unmistakable and brilliant lines of melody woven within it. I made a few alterations to the track and called it "A Healing Epilogue." Surely one day it would be the perfect closing to an epic album.

The melody continued to haunt me, and so I began to give it words. This was probably one year later. At least one person has told me that they like this song because of the words, so that must mean it was worth it. The idea behind the song is quite simple, and entirely true.
During this time I was putting to myself the age-old question: Why would Jesus weep for Lazarus? Didn't He know that He could bring him back to life? The first several lines of this song were written in the mindset of a conclusion that I had come to, and something that makes sense to me.
When we read of death in the Psalms, it's generally understood that we should think of a spiritual death as well as a physical one. It's understood that Jesus saves us from death, a death that is inextricably linked to the physical death that even atheists cannot deny. There is nothing more natural in the world than for us to mourn the passing of our loved ones. Perhaps this part of our DNA is in itself a kind of a prophecy. Perhaps this is given to us to help us understand the way God views a spiritual death.
And perhaps that is why Jesus wept. Because He witnessed firsthand the separation of the physically living from the physically dead, and understood the significance in it that pertains to the separation between the spiritually living and the spiritually dead.
Then, of course, I think any of us who call ourselves Christians here on earth would be lying if we did not admit that at one time we threw stones at the fallen adulteresses we've seen in the world, even while Jesus was reminding us in our hearts that we ourselves are not without sin. And then, similar to the story of Jonah (although I did not have him in mind while I wrote the song), we have sometimes despised our Groom because of His unending mercy. If this is not true of all Christians, then I will at least confidently say that it has been true of me. But I think that it is true of all Christians, at some point in each individual's life.

I've tried often to help others with my words, to help them understand God, or to help them overcome certain situations. But so often I have been the blind leading the blind. If these people are taken in by my eloquent words, they quickly find me leading them onto a dark road, adding my blindness to their own. I hope that I have done more good than harm, but I have not sufficiently reminded my friends that they ought to read the bible and seek out God on their own, and for their own sake.
Please, God, rescue these souls from me. And although I may doubt it sometimes when I view the past, I know confidently in my heart that He will come back to rescue me as well.

And this is where the song should end. Looking back now it occurs to me that this is the most Psalm-like thing I have ever written. Like so many of David's poems, this song goes through the trials of depression and earnest begging questions, but the end is inevitable.
All that truly matters is that God is good. I hear it in His voice.