surprise! It's...cool song lyrics!
These are from "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd. It's one of my all-time favorite songs. I love the lyrics. I can't believe it's taken me this long to post this here. Enjoy! I'd love to know what you think of it.
"So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here."
These lyrics came back to me powerfully while I was in Budapest. I was worshipping in a church with some folks who were refugees from oppressive regimes. It was really something to listen to a sermon on freedom in Christ with people who knew what it was like to not be free. As we were worshipping and I was thinking about my amazing brothers and sisters who surrounded me in this room, the lyrics ran through my head again.
"So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell"...
Here were people who had been through hellish things, and yet, here they were in this room that was filled with the fragrance of Heaven in songs of praise to God for his freedom, his love, and his redemption. In the midst of their pain, heaven was there in their hearts, in a way that I had never seen it elsewhere.
I learned a powerful lesson there. We tend to think of Heaven and Hell as two things very seperated from each other. There is truth in this--they are seperate in the sense that they couldn't be more different. But there is more to it than that. I think that, in truth, Heaven and Hell get in each other's faces. While they never, ever mix, they can often be found in the same places, doing battle for the same people.
And in that church service I got an image of the cross. On one side there were tanks and destruction, as all of the forces of evil rushed towards the pinacle of their horridness. On the other, well, there was God Himself, the King of Glory, Good Incarnate. And it was at this cross that the climax of all of history happened. All of the forces of Good and all of the forces of Evil violently collided. The Wellspring of Life himself was pulled down into the depths of death. Dead. Broken. Crushed. Humiliated. Defeated. Evil seemed to have won...for a moment. And then death, the stone table, the cage in which the Beloved One allowed himself to be shut in, broke. It shattered, was destroyed, was rendered useless and impotent. It was as if evil locked and bolted a door and boasted that no one could ever break through and then good simply knocked down the entire structure around it, so that it was just a door. A useless, looked door standing alone and absurb and nothing more. It did not have the authority to hold Him and He broke it for good. Life, truth, goodness had victory, eternal victory, over death, lies, and evil. It was finished.
I believe that this is some small part of what happened with Jesus' death and resurrection, that he was not simply a victim, but rather the do-er of the most cataclysmic event of all time. When I think about what happened, that the Father ripped his gaze and presence from the Son--could the Trinity have been seperated in that instant?--I am amazed that all of creation was not unmade that moment. And I am amazed that he counted creatures like us worthy of such a sacrifice.
"So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here."
These lyrics came back to me powerfully while I was in Budapest. I was worshipping in a church with some folks who were refugees from oppressive regimes. It was really something to listen to a sermon on freedom in Christ with people who knew what it was like to not be free. As we were worshipping and I was thinking about my amazing brothers and sisters who surrounded me in this room, the lyrics ran through my head again.
"So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell"...
Here were people who had been through hellish things, and yet, here they were in this room that was filled with the fragrance of Heaven in songs of praise to God for his freedom, his love, and his redemption. In the midst of their pain, heaven was there in their hearts, in a way that I had never seen it elsewhere.
I learned a powerful lesson there. We tend to think of Heaven and Hell as two things very seperated from each other. There is truth in this--they are seperate in the sense that they couldn't be more different. But there is more to it than that. I think that, in truth, Heaven and Hell get in each other's faces. While they never, ever mix, they can often be found in the same places, doing battle for the same people.
And in that church service I got an image of the cross. On one side there were tanks and destruction, as all of the forces of evil rushed towards the pinacle of their horridness. On the other, well, there was God Himself, the King of Glory, Good Incarnate. And it was at this cross that the climax of all of history happened. All of the forces of Good and all of the forces of Evil violently collided. The Wellspring of Life himself was pulled down into the depths of death. Dead. Broken. Crushed. Humiliated. Defeated. Evil seemed to have won...for a moment. And then death, the stone table, the cage in which the Beloved One allowed himself to be shut in, broke. It shattered, was destroyed, was rendered useless and impotent. It was as if evil locked and bolted a door and boasted that no one could ever break through and then good simply knocked down the entire structure around it, so that it was just a door. A useless, looked door standing alone and absurb and nothing more. It did not have the authority to hold Him and He broke it for good. Life, truth, goodness had victory, eternal victory, over death, lies, and evil. It was finished.
I believe that this is some small part of what happened with Jesus' death and resurrection, that he was not simply a victim, but rather the do-er of the most cataclysmic event of all time. When I think about what happened, that the Father ripped his gaze and presence from the Son--could the Trinity have been seperated in that instant?--I am amazed that all of creation was not unmade that moment. And I am amazed that he counted creatures like us worthy of such a sacrifice.