All I Can Say

We visited our son at Ft. Hood, Texas, just prior to his Iraq deployment 2 1/2 years ago. While we were there, we drove just up the road to Waco so that we could go to church where David Crowder is the worship leader.  (And the band is the David Crowder*Band, just to be clear.) We'd all heard him in person a number of times, and he's a wonderful piece of work. Love the music; I think he's the greatest cheerleader for Jesus I can think of. But you gotta hear him speak...he just brings a point of view that's so simple and singular that it shouts "wisdom" and "compassion." Like that Jesus guy, you know?

So we showed up at University Baptist Church with like 400 college students and 30 people my age, and no, I'm not kidding. This is truly a student church, and it has a lot of that student-ministry feel to it: spontaneity, temporariness, transition, launching point, and PASSION.

We were about 20 feet from da man, and he came to a song we'd never heard before. I don't throw around the words hymn, anthem, and psalm very much, because most Christian songs (or any other songs, for that matter) just don't have that feel to them.  Lots of great music, love it, it just isn't those things.

"All I Can Say" is a psalm, like the ones that King David, the great psalmist, wrote. It starts with a heart-cry, a lament: loneliness, abandonment, hopelessness. It ends with a realization and a proclamation of God's presence and comfort. It's...Davidic.

It isn't a "God is my homeboy" or "God is amazing" or even a "Jesus will save you" song. It's a song that's elemental, basic, to our human condition. We're cruising along and things are fine, but the next time we reach for where we thought God was, he isn't there. Sometimes it's because he moved. Sometimes it's because we moved, or let ourselves get surrounded by circumstances instead of him. We cry out, and we discover eventually that he's been there all along - he just doesn't look the way we thought he did.

Well, to finish the story, David hit us with this emotionally raw psalm right before our little boy, who'd run himself and us over a rocky road for a few years, was going off to war. It was a good, deep weep.

David Crowder was an awkward, backward kid when a student minister named Chris Seay started mentoring him. Not too long after that, in the late 90s as UBC was starting up, All I Can Say was written. I kind of have an idea that the song came from a man who knew firsthand what it meant to be alone and unwanted, but learned also firsthand what it meant to be chosen by the King.

My prayer, as always, is that every single one of us, each one, every one, realize their chosen-ness by the King. Even when we're deep in despair, depression, or self-deception: "I'm ok, I'm born to be this way, it's not so bad, hey I've got it pretty good compared to..." God came to those who sin, who are blinded by own sins, and are wounded by others' sins against them. Of course we can't see him at first. (Why on earth do we think we would? That's another message...) But thank God, he teaches us to see. Our simple, but oh-so-hard call is to hear and accept his teaching example.

May you have peace in your house, and discover God today in the quiet, unexpected places and times.