Hallelujah

"The baffled King composes..."

This song is in my head. It stuck into my head the very first time I heard it as the background music on a West Wing funeral. I hadn't realized what an amazing song it really was until it showed up again on janely's Christmas mix. (Everyone needs Christmas in May).

I have it on constant repeat and I can't get the achingly beautiful haunting voice of Jeff Buckley out of my head.... So to the internet I go.. looking for info on this song and to my dismay, I'm no musical scout, it's been covered 44 times to be exact and it was written in '84.

But it's still a good song...

It's amazing really, the blend of sorrow and joy. They are truly inseparable.

Sunday, as I listened to Susan recount the grief and beauty of her life, and her husbands death, and raising her two boys alone, I started to understand the cold and broken Hallelujah.

I understand, maybe am only beginning to understand, the beauty and the true goodness of the holes in our lives. The God shaped holes.

Paul wasn't an ass when he said "Rejoice" in suffering. He wasn't an ass, because he WAS in prison and rejoicing... and because he KNEW what was ahead. He did know why the thorns weren't removed. He did know why he was allowed to hurt. Because it was only for a time. Because he had seen the prize that was waiting, and everything else was dimmer by comparison. Because his hurt was purposeful, because it was for the sake of spreading the news of an epic love gone wrong, with the possibility of becoming right.

"The minor fall and the major lift... "

So often we take Paul's words and others like his, to mean "suck it up" or "be happy" about this event that has caused you pain. Don't shed a tear, become hard, become strong...

Wrong.

Cry, weep, break... let Him lift your head. Because God cries with us, He cried when he was here. We do not come to know Him in the blessing, but in the breaking. That is why a good God lets bad things happen to good people.

Doctors smack a baby to open it's lungs so that it will cry and be able to breathe, or it will die.

It seems too simple and profound written down. It's much more confusing in the realm of reality. It's much harder to see the good, loving and purposeful movement of a God who IS all knowing, all loving and all crazy about us when the rains come. When your husband dies, when your friends get cancer, when you lose your job, when your wife leaves you, when you are lonely, when you are starving. But we must recall that Jesus knew all these times too, and in the incredibly observant simply put words of my adamant brother...

"Jesus' suffering only helped his case"...