This song came to mind a few mornings ago as I looked out my window into the woods behind my home. Watching the creek flow over the rocks, while birds peck at their breakfast and squirrels scamper from branch to branch, I sing to myself and feel a heaviness begin to lift. A heaviness I am unable to put into words. A heaviness that comes from watching the global death toll mount as we shelter in place behind closed doors – as we try to adapt to a world that is, once again, forever changed. A heaviness that comes from knowing I have running water and food and a place to shelter, but there are millions who do not – who live piled on top of one another in refugee camps and slums. Human beings have no place to hide, no way to distance themselves, no way to earn their daily bread.
I’ve come to realize that I’m grieving. I think most of us are. I recognize this wordless, scattered, unfocused, sometimes-weepy-sometimes-numb state of mind for what it is. And I still can’t find the words I’m looking for so instead, here’s a song we recorded live 16 years ago, not long after my best friend was killed in a car accident. I sang it at her memorial and this Easter weekend, I’m singing it again. I’m posting it here with the prayer that whoever might stumble onto it will find a brief place to rest your soul as we look up and see the beauty and faithfulness of the One who created everything that is. We may be isolated, but we are not alone. God is with us.
Paper Thin Places 