At any given point in life, there’s bound to be quite a bit going on (or maybe that’s just my life, but I have a sneaking suspicion that’s not the case). And I suppose “quite a bit going on” can be taken to mean a myriad of things, but rightfully so. It could be difficult things. It could be wonderful things you’ve been waiting for. Or it could just be things in general that aren’t necessarily good or bad, just things that happen that add another dimension to your daily existence, for better or worse.
Honestly, I was almost hoping that my life would go the route of becoming one of those boring adult lives where nothing really happens over the course of several months and you just go to work, go home, occasionally see friends, and everything remains stable for the foreseeable future. But that hasn’t really happened yet. For the time being, it seems like there’s still a number of random events and “life things” cropping up at every twist and turn, and that’s been a struggle as of late. At the same time, something I’ve been seeing is that with so many new things around every corner, old songs have started taking on new meanings for me.
For the majority of our lives, I think we have most things nicely planned out for us, with a set structure that allows us to know what to expect from life for the most part. Up until the moment we graduate from college (or perhaps high school for some), we have a plan we can fall back on it, because life tends to follow a linear pattern. But after that, I think many of us are taken off guard by the fact that a lot of that structure evaporates once we enter what so many millennials affectionately (or maybe not so affectionately) call “the real world.”
At that point, things become a lot less certain, because the more or less straight line that’s been painted on the ground for us to follow usually ends there. We emerge in this big world without a clear sense of what to do, or at least I feel like I did, and we’re forced to rely on God more than we perhaps ever needed to before arriving at that place.
Because of that new reliance, I’ve found that the song Oceans (Where Feet May Fail) has really begun to hit a lot closer to home. Maybe it’s just because we don’t necessarily take worship songs for what they mean a lot of the time, but I feel like I didn’t quite understand what the song was really saying until just recently in my life. And it’s saying a lot of scary things that are hard to actually mean when you sing the song I think.
If you think about it, what does it really mean to say, “Spirit, lead me where my trust is without borders. Let me walk upon the waters wherever you might call me?”
That’s a crazy thing to say, especially when so many of us, and especially myself, like to have that clear cut certainty about where our lives our going and what our next step is. And perhaps this is even scarier and more powerful when God has already revealed to us what that next step is supposed to be or where our lives are going, but the seeming reality of the world and our life circumstances makes that seem so daunting or unrealistic. It’s easy to sing that line, but it’s a lot harder to take a hard look at life when our trust in God is reaching our borders and say “Okay, God, I’m here at the edge of my comfort zone. I don’t know where I’m going or how You’re going to make this work, but I trust you to let me walk upon the water to where you’re calling me.”
That’s crazy. That’s scary. That’s not easy, especially when we hit harder points and start to sink into the water a little. Suddenly, it’s not just a line in a song anymore; it’s real life and we have to really mean what we’re saying, which is something I think a lot of us aren’t prepared for, to really ask God for that faith. At least, I know that I wasn’t prepared for it when I reached this point of life, and maybe that’s why this song suddenly seems so real.
Some Saturday reflections for you…
Another Anomaly Among Many 