When Words Help

Weak and wounded sinner

Lost and left to die

Raise your head for love is passing by

These are the first words to a favorite song of mine by Chris Rice.

I have a major songwriter crush on this guy. I listened to his CD Past the Edges throughout my labor with John Michael so his voice reminds me of the happiest accomplishment in my life. I bought one of his anniversary CDs right before the MRI that discovered the tumor that was eventually diagnosed as synovial cell sarcoma. So his voice also reminds me that on a very scary day, he made me smile. He wrote one of the best Christmas songs ever, Welcome to our World, and the song Smellin' Coffee about the phenomenon of going to bed world-weary and waking up miraculously refreshed - something I've experienced again and again. He also wrote And Your Praise Goes On in which we see how creation praised its creator from the beginning, then we picked up the song, and it will continue even when our life on earth has ended.

This quote is from the song Come to Jesus, its lyrics following the tradition of classic hymns that describe a believer's journey from salvation to eternity. And it's a favorite in our house.

You know I love words. And this week I thought I'd share some of my favorite lines - phrases that made me wonder how the writer managed to put words together so beautifully, describing so powerfully something I've felt or that I desperately want to. I love this particular line. Weak and wounded sinner - yep, I relate. Then, raise your head for love is passing by.

How often is our salvation there if we would just raise our head to see it? How true that only looking in and at ourselves can make us sad, but looking up and out brings help. How beautiful that the answer to our weakness and our wounds, is love.

Google didn't bring me any recent Chris Rice news today - nothing since 2008. I hope he hasn't stopped writing. And if he has, I hope he knows how grateful someone is that at some point he wrote the words he did, and that he shared them.