A New Song

While listening to the Switchfoot song "Your Love is a Song" recently, I remarked to a friend that I love that song because it describes how I sometimes prefer to imagine God's love. Your love is a symphony, all around me, running through me. Your love is a melody, underneath me, running through me. I realize I'm at least a little bit ripping off Rob Bell in this idea. It would be a lie to say that when I saw the video "Rhythm" in the NOOMA series a couple of years ago that it didn't stick with me. But I've gotten stuck on this idea of music as an "image" for God's love for a while. It's like an orchestra. There are different sections, the strings, the brass, the woodwinds, the percussion...all those sections have a part to play, and when those parts are executed perfectly, even alone you can recognize the brilliance. But when you start to put them together, when the parts start to layer on top of one another to create the masterpiece, it takes on a new kind of life.

I was thinking about that tonight at what may seem like the strangest of times. I spent about 2 hours with about 30 complete strangers. I spent almost the whole two hours in silence. When I did speak, it was quietly. Mostly I just listened, and at times I wiped at a tear that welled up in my own eyes. The reason we were all gathered was because I am a chaplain and a member of their family died. He died suddenly and without any warning. There were screams and sobs. There were soft whimpers and barely audible prayers whispered. The whole time, I kept thinking about God's love being like a song. The reason it kept coming to mind was because the sound of that room reminded me of those few minutes before an orchestra performance when the strings section is tuning and warming up. At first the sound is horrible. It sets your teeth on edge and raises the hairs on your arms. They are preparing for a new song.

"New song" is a biblical concept. A little bit of digging will show you that the phrase "new song" comes up more than a couple of times in scripture. And when scripture speaks of this new song, it tends to come alongside God's flipping something on its head. Some sort of condition is changing. Life is changing for good or bad. Change is coming.

Tonight, unfortunately, that family is faced with a new song, not of their desires, but they do face a new life. They will have to deconstruct their old life and reconstruct a new one that fits the new family configuration. I do not understand pain and suffering, and I probably will never find the answers I'm looking for, but I could hear the discordant notes playing and rubbing against each other tonight. My hope and my prayer is that just as the strings start to come into tune and prepare for the song, so will God's love enfold them with God's new song, a song of love and grace and mercy, even in times of grief.