Old Song

Sleeping is something I rarely have trouble doing. I just had a fitful night. But morning finally came. It always does. I had a dream in the night where I was dealing with a wayward, ungrateful kid with a bad attitude who was hurting people who loved him and were trying to help by disdaining or just ignoring them. I manhandled him a bit and gave him a stern lecture about deciding where his life and destiny was going to go. The dream ended with me leaning back and realizing “thou art the man.”

I woke up a little while ago thinking of a song I sang as a kid with some friends many years ago. It was taken loosely from John 14:

He is the way, without him there's no going
He is the truth, without him there's no knowing
He is the life, now and eternally
He satisfies the searching heart
and fills man with his love
full, rich, and free

I was naive and thought I knew all about this. But the words were true nonetheless. Now I'm old. I've been around the world a bunch of times. Figuratively and literally. I've seen and experienced much. Probably too much. I'm tired. I'm broken. I'm cynical. The words of the old song are still true. But now I know how little I know of them. Education is the process of discovering how much you don't and can never know but developing the habit of and fascination with lifelong learning anyway. Spiritually it's the same. As another old friend from that era used to sing “Lord I've learned this one thing to be true: Is that the closer I get to You, I see I'm a stranger to Your holiness.”