Song Lyric Week 5 Part 2: “Crushed Beneath The Wait”
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There is an up and coming band whom I know named One Star Story. I’ve mentioned them before in previous blogs and used their song “Near To Far” in a previous Song Lyric Week. They released a new EP a few months back and just as in their previous effort the songs really reached me. (It’s nice to be able to know a band and be able to tell them their music really does move you.)
One of the songs from their new EP The Empty Room (which you can get from iTunes for around seven bucks) is “Crushed Beneath the Wait” and it’s a message that I believe will resonate very loudly with so many people. When we want to serve God with all of our hearts it’s sometimes not easy for us to sit and wait. It can feel like the emptiness that surrounds us where we would like to see it filled with all kinds of various things almost in itself is like an two ton weight pressing down on us.
Here’s the lyrics of One Star Story’s song:
The room, it starts to spin
And I begin
To realize that you may
Not find the way
The walls begin to push me in
It’s hard to see where this could end
The shadows start to fill this room
I’m hoping you will be here…
Soon, don’t be late
I’m crushed beneath the wait
Crushed beneath the wait
Of this empty room
Room, frustrating
Hopes are fading
As I’m waiting here
For the call to come and let me know
As the walls now push me in
It’s near impossible to see the end
The shadows now fill this room
I’m hoping you will be here…
Standing and staying
And praying and saying
You’ll find me
You’ll find me
As I hear the song, I picture someone sitting in that big empty room on their knees just screaming out to God for something. It could be a prayer for health or to meet a financial need or just to open a door to ministry or service. You desire something so badly and God is essentially telling you it’s not time yet. So you pray and pray and nothing seems to happen and the silence from heaven is crushing your hope.
It’s not a fun place to be. Trust me.
The situation reminds of something I heard in today’s Daily Audio Bible reading regarding King David from 1 Chronicles:
“Now after this Nahash the king of the Ammonites died, and his son reigned in his place. And David said, “I will deal kindly with Hanun the son of Nahash, for his father dealt kindly with me.” So David sent messengers to console him concerning his father. And David’s servants came to the land of the Ammonites to Hanun to console him. But the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun, “Do you think, because David has sent comforters to you, that he is honoring your father? Have not his servants come to you to search and to overthrow and to spy out the land?” So Hanun took David’s servants and shaved them and cut off their garments in the middle, at their hips, and sent them away; and they departed. When David was told concerning the men, he sent messengers to meet them, for the men were greatly ashamed. And the king said, “Remain at Jericho until your beards have grown and then return.”” – 1 Chronicles 19:1-5 (ESV)
You don’t think the men who were told to stay in Jericho weren’t chomping at the bit to go after the Ammonites as they knew King David would do? Yet they were told to essentially sit and wait and they would be fetched at a later time. It had to be frustrating and lonely and in itself crushing to them.
Now, this is the point in the blog where I usually have some snappy answer or word of advice to help you get through these situations or to try and make you walk closer with the Lord. Today, I really don’t have a snazzy, “fit it on a T-shirt” kind of answer for you. These times where everything seems crashing down around you and God is standing far away can’t be solved with a bumper sticker phrase or picture of a cat hanging from a tree limb. The wait can turn to pain and frustration and it’s very real to you. It’s not something that you can just dismiss and pretend that it’s not happening so you can put on a happy face for everyone else.
The important thing to keep in mind is that no matter how much you may feel abandoned by God…and believe me, the enemy do all they can to make you feel that way…He has not left you. I could spew at you the stock verses that most Christians know when they face someone dealing with a situation of despair…verses telling how He will never leave you…but instead I want to turn this a different direction and look at what will happen to those faithful to God even in the times where it seems everything is hopelessly lost.
The story of Job is well known even among people who are not believers in Christ. The story of the man who lost everything he owned, all of his children and even his health because Satan said the Job would turn away from God. If you’re looking for someone in the Bible who was crushed beneath the wait it would be Job. Now, people tend to focus on the pain Job experienced and they’ll say at the end God blessed him again but have you looked at the depth of the blessing?
“And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters.” – Job 42:12-14 (ESV)
And for the record, Job’s daughters were total babes. Job 42:15 (ESV) says “And in all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job’s daughters.”
So after enduring the time of silence from God…because until the end of Job the Lord gave him no answer as to why things were happening to him…Job was given twice what he had lost and he was father to the most beautiful women in the land. The Lord could bless us beyond anything we can possibly imagine but we have to endure the hard times as well as the good times and even those times when we’re crushed beneath the wait.
If you’re in that place of despair this likely isn’t much of a help. I’m pretty sure it’s not going to pull you out of it or if you know someone facing it this blog isn’t going to be the thing that pulls them out of it. Still, I hope that it can be something you can look at and perhaps begin to focus your prayers not on the problem at hand but the Lord who is greater than all of it and the only solution to the problems crushing you.
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