Letters to a Samuel Generation: Why Can’t We Sing?
written March 2004
I sit in a church, and look to the ceiling. Churches have ceilings—four walls, and a floor. Even so, a church should not feel like a box.
“Your relationship with God fits into one of these three categories,” says the preacher. “Raise your hand and tell me what door you live behind—1, 2, or 3.” The people bow their heads and close their eyes and raise their hands, and the walls of the box close in tighter. I look up to the ceiling and my eyes try to penetrate the grey. I AM is not here! Not trapped in this room! He fills all the starry sky. Oh, to fly with Him! Up from the building, out from the boxes. My life is not behind a door. It does not fit into neat little wrapping any more than my God does!
“Stand and sing,” the preacher says. “Stand and worship God.” And I try to sing.
Manufactured music without melody.
We drum and we drone and we raise our hands high.
But we’re trying to sing!
Lord, why can’t we sing?
Our music falls short of a song.
There is a Woman. Christ loves her. She “looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners” (Song of Solomon 6:10). She is the Church, the Bride, and I also love her. But I see her not yet a woman—a girl only, one who peers into the mirror and frowns at the scars Jesus loves. She frowns and tries to cover herself up. She wants to look like a cover girl. She wants the world to think she is beautiful. And she covers the music in her soul with all the world’s visible noise.
“Do your makeup, do your hair,
“Bow your head, say your prayers.”
Set us free from the world!
From the tyranny of paint!
We’re trying to sing!
Lord, why can’t we sing?
Our music falls short of a song.
“Are you a good Christian?” the preacher asks. “Read your Bible, say your prayers. Smile at your neighbour and say the magic words.” We’re on fire for God, lighting little matchsticks that flicker in wind and die under water. Yet in our God a fire rages—a mighty kiln, an all-Consuming Fire. Into the depths we are called, where the Fourth Man waits to meet us, “one like the Son of God.” Instead we comfort ourselves in church and sing with the youth group and pretend that this is what we are called to, and divorce ourselves further from reality.
“We’re on fire for God”
But our fire burns pale
Like neon lights on white city walls.
But where is the burning?
The deep-seated fire?
Our music falls short of a song.
There! Outside the church walls a woman is weeping! She has chosen the Right. She has chosen Rejection. The world has turned its back and she is hurting. Real pain. Real suffering. But there, can you see it? The flame flickering in her soul. Her teardrops are the colour of fire.
There! With the children, learning to love. A young man is breaking. He is letting go of the Noise and letting silence in. And there in the silence, deep in his soul—can you hear it? The song is beginning to stir. Soon he will sing. And the music will move the stars to weep and to rejoice.
There! On the green hill, under the moon. An old man is looking up, up to the sky, and thinking, and dreaming, and knowing at last that I AM THAT I AM is there. The top of the box is lifting slowly. Fire and song mingle deep within his soul. Soon the box will fade completely, and then he will fly.
There! In the dirt of the world! In the pain of life! In the deepest things of soul and sky! There I can see her, the Woman that Christ loves, the Bride that He died to make her.
So I bow my head in the box and the music drones on.
Manufactured music without melody.
Then I smile and lift my eyes.
We drum and we drone and we lift our hands high.
Under the noise I know she is there…
But we’re trying to sing!
Lord, why can’t we sing?
The Woman I love is there, trying to sing. And someday she’ll learn, and she’ll cast off the noise.
For the first time she’ll fly: she’ll sing, and she’ll fly.
In fields of fire she’ll run, and she’ll see Him. He’ll hold out His hand, and she’ll take it.
They’ll dance.
Manufactured music without melody
We drum and we drone and we raise our hands high.
But we’re trying to sing!
Lord, why can’t we sing?
Our music falls short of a song.
