Take My World Apart

I've been playing my guitar a lot more regularly at home lately. I'm not 100% sure what that's about. Often I gravitate toward playing when I'm feeling sad, or upset, or having other big feelings that I don't really want to talk about, and instead they come out through the strings of my guitar. Tonight I wasn't really feeling any big feelings, but I still headed to the basement and pulled out my guitar for a while to make some music. 

I know my limitations as a musician. I can play fine enough--particularly if I have the chords for a song--I can play pretty much anything, but it won't necessarily sound like it does on the radio. I mostly make a joyful noise, if you know what I mean.

I got my first guitar as a high schooler. I was 16, and I took lessons for a few months. I learned enough to get started, but I didn't exactly take to it immediately. But my guitar came with me to college, and I think that's where I really started to learn for real. I still have some chord sheets that I printed off from the On-Line Guitar Archive in the mid 1990s. (Ah, OLGA...I remember you when...) Maybe you can picture me with a mop of blonde hair (with a center part, because, you know, the mid 90s) and wearing flannel and jeans with holes in the knees, strumming away on my acoustic guitar in my apartment? I can admit now that I harbored some secret dream of being part of an acoustic alternative rock group--it was the age of MTV unplugged and all that, after all! But that's a late-adolescent imagination, I suppose.

Still, it's funny how the songs I played then are the ones I still know by heart. "Time" by Hootie and the Blowfish. "Run Around" by Blues Traveler. "Breakfast at Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something. "One Headlight" by The Wallflowers. "Untitled" by Collective Soul. "Walk on the Ocean" by Toad the Wet Sprocket. "All for You" by Sister Hazel. "The Freshman" by the Verve Pipe. "Lightning Crashes" by Live. (Oh, so many songs...) Some of these bands you might know...others probably not. But they left a mark on me, and they are still part of me.

And, of course, my favorite band of all from that era, Jars of Clay. Jars was my go-to Christian band for...well, honestly, for the past 25 years. As my taste in music has changed and expanded over the years, this is one band that stuck: I'm a forever-fan of these guys, and the way they take their faith so seriously, and the way it informs their musicianship. Their self-titled first album...I must have listened to that one a hundred times during the 1995-96 school year. And, here I am 25 years later... and I can still play many of those songs off the top of my head--by heart.

But it's interesting how we talk about "knowing songs by heart," isn't it? Somehow, these songs that I played so often in my apartment got deep inside of me, into...my heart?

And tonight, that's where I was, in the basement, strumming and singing. Like it was the spring of 1996...I was playing one of my very favorite Jars songs, "Worlds Apart." If you're not familiar with the song, I'd welcome you to take a listen:

I love these lyrics. I love the music of this one. The poetry of this song speaks to me.

And in this contemporary moment, where everyone--me too!--seems outraged about everything, maybe this is the prayer that I need to be praying again. (Maybe you too?)

I am the only one to blame for this 
Somehow it all ends up the same
Soaring on the wings of selfish pride
I flew too high and like Icarus
I collide

With a world I try so hard

To leave behind

To rid myself of all but love

To give and die

...

To love you, take my world apart
To need you, I am on my knees
To love you, take my world apart
To need you, broken on my knees 

All said and done I stand alone
Amongst the remains of life I should not own
It takes all I am to believe
In the mercy that covers me

Did you really have to die for me? 
All I am for all you are
Because what I need
And what I believe
Are worlds apart
And I pray 

To love you, take my world apart
To need you, I am on my knees 

To love you, take my world apart

To need you, broken on my knees 

...

Not out of any self-righteousness here...but I needed to sing this song tonight. I needed to pray these words tonight. I need to get over myself. I need to stop thinking so highly of myself, and my opinions, and my self-assumed rightness, as if I can look down my nose at people who think differently than I do, judging them as wrong, because I must be right.

Right now, I'm feeling that I need to humble myself a little bit. Try to be a little more like Jesus. Stop trying so hard to build my own kingdom, and care more about building His. 

Take my world apart.

Certainly this is not scripture...its poetry, music. 

Take my world apart. 

But I think this song captures the gospel.

Take my world apart.

Help me to care more about loving You, loving my neighbors, loving my fellow humans who are created in Your image, loving this world you have made.

Take my world apart, Jesus. 

And let me step more and more into Your world, Your kingdom, Your way of being.