But then, who is there to rescue us?
Is there anyone to rescue us? And if there is … …we surely need someone who may well ‘live in a high and holy place’, but who is also with him ‘who is contrite and lowly in spirit’ …, one whose heart is ‘to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite’ (Is 57:15). One who ... will not accuse for ever, nor … always be angry … in concern that ‘the spirit of man would grow faint before me – the breath of man that I have created’ (Is 57:16). One who may well be ‘enraged’ by my ‘sinful greed’, yet remains deeply committed to me. One who is fully familiar with my ‘wilful ways’, yet who, in full knowledge of me, still chooses to say, and with divine authority: 18 I have seen his ways, but I will heal him’ (Is 57:18). One who fully knows me … yet fully loves me.
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Get in line with the things you know
Feel the pain, feel the sorrow Touch the hurt and don't let go Don't let go, don't let go Get in line with the things you know Learn to cry like a baby Then the hurting won't come back Won't come back, won't come back These are words from ‘The Hurting’,[1] and it is interesting to speculate on what it was about such sentiments, and those expressed in Mad World, that so struck a chord with the national psyche (of 18-22 year olds at least!) in the early 1980s. As we have seen, the words were written by those from broken homes, with absent fathers, and yet they resonated with a much wider audience, including a grammar school boy from a middle class home in Surrey. Was there something about the concept expressed in these words, that was somehow liberating in the world of the post-war, ‘stiff upper lip’, unquestioned institutional authority of the early 1980s? Feel the pain, feel the sorrow Touch the hurt and don't let go Which all brings us back to the wound at the heart of humanity. If there is such a wound, a ‘stiff upper lip’ just won’t do. But if we allow ourselves to follow our instincts and to ‘feel the pain’ and to ‘feel the sorrow’, well … what then? And if Jeremiah is right (Jer 17:9) that: The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure … … and yet we still want to live with reality, rather than avoid it, well … what then? So we take the risk. We ‘touch the hurt and don’t let go’. We ‘learn to cry like a baby’. [1] the first song on the album, also called ‘The Hurting’. |
AuthorPhil Lawrence Archives
December 2020
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