July 18, 2008

I was listening to this awesome song on the way home sitting in traffic. I hate traffic. I have no understanding how people can commute an hour each way of their day. So the song is Learning How to Bend by Gary Allan. I like Gary, I have since his first album. His first wife committed suicide and for those of us who have ever had someone close to you do that, you know, it forever haunts you. I think it has shown significantly in the songs he has written since then. It's been a number of years, I think 5ish and he is even remarried but I like these lyrics.

I’m still learning how to pray
Try to see things your way
I’m still learning how to pray

How many Christians feel like we never really learned how to pray? And I have been to many a seminar/ retreat/ workshop even read books on various people's "How to Pray." Some say journal it. Others encourage you to have categories and spend so many minutes on each category such as prayers for unsaved friends, time for prayers of thanksgiving, etc. Others encourage you to speak from the heart and let the Holy Spirit intercede where you fall short. Hundreds have written books of prayer so you can just use theirs if you want. I think it is a combination of things. There are times when we just need to pour out our heart and cry to the Lord, our God, lover of our soul. Other times we do need to make sure we are offering up prayers of thanksgiving as much as we are prayers of "God please gimme." The best I have heard thus far was to pray back scripture because God is always faithful to his word. And I do think learning how to pray/ learning how to communicate in a relationship with the creator of all probably should be a lifelong process to perfect.

The song goes on

I’m still learning how to trust
It’s so hard to open up
I’m still learning how to trust

I’m still learning how to bend
How to let you in

In a world full of tears
We’ll conquer all our fears

Wow, isn't that the truth. Why is it so hard to open up? So hard to let people in? For some it seems amazingly easy, for others almost impossible. At least the songwriter encourages us that we'll conquer all our fears but I'm not sure I believe that. I don't believe we conquer all our fears...life just isn't that perfect...not this life but one day, one day, we will live where there is no fear.

The song goes on

I’m just trying to understand
It’s all in someone else’s hands
There’s always been a bigger plan
But I don’t need to understand
I’m still learning how to bend
How to let you in
In a world full of tears
We’ll conquer all our fears
I’m still learning how to bend

It's true, we must have faith in a bigger plan, many spend exhaustive amounts of time trying to understand. That time is spent in vain if we are trying to understand omnipotent concepts with human brains. For some things, we need not waste the time trying to break everything into minute pieces, faith is an amazing thing. It frees you. Christ is freedom from bondage, even the bondage of having to scientifically map out everything.

So we'll go on, still learning how to bend.