If you’re lost you can look and you will find me …
The lyrics greeted me as I plugged my headset into the armrest. Just finishing a three week trip in Europe, it was a relief to chuckle at Patty & Tuck’s rendition of Time After Time. I had watched Napoleon Dynamite often enough that the song and movie were forever entwined. As Patty’s voice tapered off, the smooth rich sound of a jazz scale being plucked on a base began introducing the next song.
“ATTENTION PLEASE.”
I ripped the earbuds away from me as the announcement blared through the personal entertainment systems. Seriously, is it law that all airlines must triple the volume when making announcements? Perhaps a subsection of the law requiring commercials to broadcast multiple decibels louder than ‘regularly scheduled programming’? Despite the ringing in my ears I figured out that they were informing us of an unexpected delay. I waited a few minutes after the click to make sure the announcement was really over and then returned the earbuds to their place.
If you’re lost you can look and you will find me …
The announcement must have reset the radio program. I grinned and remembered Napoleon’s mad dancing skills. Settling back into my seat, I relaxed once again and guiltily enjoyed the cheesy song. I was however ready for the jazz by the second time it ended.
“WE APPOLOGI-”
My hands were a fraction faster this time, but my ears still screamed at me for allowing such abuse. Thank you so much for letting me know they moved us further down the queue. Appreciated. No really.
The same routine occurred ‘time after time’. The third time I became smart enough to balance the earbuds on my shoulder rather than wedge them in my ears. By the sixth I was getting pretty sick of the song. It took me until the eighth to make a discovery.
For every tear that sorrow has left you, tears of joy are going to take their place.
How many times had I just heard that line without hearing it?
Previously, I had been dismissing the song as wishful thinking. Real life wasn’t like that. Unless … well unless it actually was. There was truth in there, it was just difficult to see it through the cheese.
One of the last things I did in Europe was to take a pilgrimage to a memorial at the location of a former Nazi concentration camp. I hiked there and surveyed the decimated buildings in an appropriate dreary drizzle. Scattered among the ruins were new statues with titles like Solidarity, Protection and Unbroken. These seemed to downplay the helplessness of those that had been brought to the camp and to paint them in a strong positive light. Unbroken, for example, represented a man who had been thrown into the mud pushing himself up in defiance.
I didn’t know how to handle the contrast. The statues seemed to be lying. That wasn’t what had happened. People were broken here … physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally. My understanding is that those who did push themselves back up when they were “supposed” to lie in the mud were shot. This was a place where evil had won, wasn’t it?
Had tears of joy really been available to those who had wept tears of sorrow here?
I ran my fingers over the remains of a wall and peeled off some moss whose tiny roots were partnering with the weather to slowly wear away at what was left of the barracks. Evil had certainly tried to win. Hate, pride and greed had tried to be bigger and stronger then love, humility and generosity. But like those ruins, evil has to end.
Am I willing to trust that God really does know what he is doing? That ultimately, for every tear of sorrow that spring from the wrong choices of man that there will be tears of joy sourced in Him?
I remembered a worship song comparing Jesus to the fragrance after the rain as the drizzle tapered off. On the airplane, when we taxied to the runway, the message of that song connected with the song Patty and Tuck had been singing to me over and over again.
Did I feel ridiculous experiencing a deeper revelation of truth through Napoleon’s high school dance song? Somewhat.
Am I going to break out in hopeful laughter the next time I plug that DVD into my laptop?
Yes, yes I am.
—
Have you ever found “Truth in Cheese”? I’d love to hear the cheesiest example in the comments.
Blessings,
Rusty
The Good Argentumware. 
You thought that the Lord showing you something through a song was cheesy? Well, maybe at the time, you wondered if it wasn’t a bit cheesy. But do you still?
The Lord has used song and lyrics to minister to my heart for years, through giving me lyrics for music on my guitar, or through songs other’s sang at church, or on the radio. There are too many to give you all of them as “for instances”. I guess He knew my brain sensed well on that “wave length.”
I will give you one of mine and one that I remember my son relating too me, around the time he graduated from high school. Yes, he also has received from the Lord in this way as well. And I know that Alex has, as well.
My son didn’t like change growing up, and it came forward, when he graduated, with the understanding that many changes were coming in this time of his life. The Lord gave him a Kathy Triccoli song called
” Everything Changes.”
When my first husband passed away, all three of us had a period of grieving, but on one evening, all three of us received a song by Rene Garcia, called “I Have Got The Bounce.” It was what God knew we needed to hear, at that exact time in our lives. I am pretty sure that Alex will remember that night. I get the sense that such providential things happen more often than we grasp them. God knows we are but “sheep”, and are often dull of hearing. On one occasion, He had to repeat himself on three different occasions through three differing circumstances, (a song, the Bible, and a pastor at church) before I “got it”, but He was faithful to persistently put it before me until I comprehended Him speaking to me in that way. I think that is exactly what He was doing with you, in repeating the song, until you got the message. He keeps ALL of his sheep (John 17). We just have to keep watching for His holy nudges and for all the different ways He can speak to us…His ways are beyond fathoming, like the stars, numberless. He is a very resourceful, good Shepherd. Even when we fall down in the hearing department, He knows our weaknesses and helps us. I think this is especially true of young believers who are newly learning that they can hear guidance from the Lord.
Thank you for sharing your experience on the blog. I hope that you get other responses as well.
With love from,
Mom E
LikeLike
Thanks for your feedback MomE 🙂
I think the cheese factor in my experience was less the fact that He was communicating to me through a song and more which song he was choosing to use … I only really knew this particular song in the midst of a movie that was using it to max out the cheese (granted I had heard it on the radio before but I didn’t “know” it yet :p). I think that was what I was trying to communicate, that He sometimes enjoys communicating to us in completely unexpected ways.
I absolutely agree with you that He will patiently repeat Himself when we don’t “get it”.
Love back at you 🙂
Rusty
LikeLike