Thurs Dec 1 - Pearls (Antje Duvekot)

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

…I wait for the Lord, my soul waits and in God’s word I hope;

my soul waits for the Lord
more than those who watch for the morning,

more than those who watch for the morning.

                                     -Psalm 130:1-2, 5-6

                                                       

Pearls by Antje Duvekot **ADVISORY: Some profanity present.

          This is not my song. Its raw, aching emotion pulls at my heart and my spirit rises in lament with the words: “I've been expecting you forever, waiting here for you…” But the essence of this song, the story that it tells does not belong to me, a child of the church, who cannot claim:

              
                   “I tried to find a church that I could walk in

                   they tried to nail me on original sin.

                  So when you gonna' come for me, Lord?”

                                                               

            Don’t get me wrong, I have many times in my life felt that God is too slow in coming. I have known the pain of seemingly endless waiting; I have even, more than once, wondered not when but if God was coming for me at all. But that fear has never been confirmed by someone claiming that God, in fact, is not coming for me.

           Yet, so many brothers and sisters - young old GAY lesbian transgendered questioning  DOUBTING differently-abled  faithful seeking - have been ‘nailed’ on something when they tried to find a church that they could walk into.  More to the point, they have been told that the church is not for them to walk into. I hear in this song the heartbreak of those who feel disconnected, of the disenfranchised, of the outcast. And my heart's response is a lament more along the lines of “Church, what we have done?!”

  [  *Brief aside: Today, on World AIDS Day, let us not be negligent in acknowledging the ways that many in the church have broken our relationships with brothers and sisters victimized by this hateful disease; causing a lament to rise from many who have been made to feel they are beyond the embrace of God’s family.  ]

            No, this is not my song, but it is so precious to me. It reminds me of the psalmist, laid bare with raw longing and the gritty struggle of life. There is more honest emotion in this song, than many of the poetically worded, ‘F-bomb’-free prayers I have spoken in church services.  But, most importantly, this song reminds me of the worthiness of that for which we wait in this season, the greatness of this longed-for Redemption that will make our world new; for the LoveLight is coming, and it is coming for us ALL.

Give us ears to hear the lament of those around us, that we may better know the One who answers all of our longings.

                                                          -Lindsey