Longing

"One summer day after another broke with a cool effulgence...and there was a breath of widening life in the morning air, something hard to describe - an oxygen intoxicant...some odor, some feeling so hopelessly promising that I would fall back in my bed on guard against it....I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because those mornings were too full of beauty for me"

-John Knowles, A Separate Peace

How many times have I wanted to 'break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy"?! Certain music does it to me, the songs that can actually bring me back to a place were things were once 'OK'. I've been listening to a CD lately that arouses within me a mix of emotions ranging from longing, to hope, to fear, to inexpressible joy. But I am left still with this longing. The problem isn't resolved when I listen to the song I am just more aware of it when it is over.

Something inside me is breaking
Something inside says there's somewhere better than this...

There must be somewhere better than this. Things aren't the way they should be.

All I can do sometimes is cling to the hope that God is fixing the problem. Not only in my own life, where I would love to put things right, but in the whole world. Things will be OK. The music reminds me not only that I have this longing deep inside me for peace (Shalom) but that it doesn't have to end this way. The hope here is that there is more to the song. The score has been written and the notes have been arranged. Our task now is to figure out how to play it together.