You Alone Can Rescue
“You alone can rescue; you alone can save. You alone can lift us from the grave. You came down to find us, led us out of death. To you alone belongs the highest praise!” - Matt Redman
This morning I stumbled upon a song by Matt Redman, You Alone Can Rescue, that I haven’t thought about in a very long time. I generally listen to choral music so I can sing along (and pretend I’m the director sometimes, too), and because it’s soothing to me. Listening to You Alone Can Rescue for the first time in a long time today, however, was more balm for my soul than I could have ever imagined.
I spent my seminary summers in Baja California, Mexico, translating for mission teams. I was with a different team every week and the one constant in all the change was the nightly team devo. We would often sing that song, sitting on a cold linoleum floor of a quaint hotel in one of the cities along the Baja. I loved to play it on repeat as we would travel from Ensenada to any number of little towns where our mission teams were sponsoring churches and the mountains and coastline with the ocean reaching out for miles were the perfect backdrop for listening to a song about grace.
Today in the midst of tiredness and grief, the words of this song held me, and I could feel God’s presence with me. I didn’t let the tears behind my eyes see the light of day, because they may have never stopped; but I felt seen in the midst of a time that feels like what the Psalmist described in Psalm 42: “my tears have been my food day and night,” Psalm 42 is a lament that acknowledges grief and that feeling we get sometimes when God feels far away. It also acknowledges the works of the Lord within the faith community and names a trust in God that the Psalmist will once again praise God. The Psalmist puts every hope in that trust, and presents hope and trust, and lament as an offering to God.
Today, I named my griefs and I did ask God why it seemed like during a particularly arduous journey that my husband and I have traveled, that God seemed so very far away, even in the midst of every prayer we have lifted and every trust we have laid bare. And then, I reflected on the work of God in our life together, in my ministry and in the lives of the people I serve. My cries of “why are you so far away?” became proclamations of “I have hope and trust, and it’s going to be ok.”
We walk a weird road, as Christians, where grief and hope are often held in tension with one another. Thanks be to God for this odd, extraordinary gift.
Sara Robb-Scott, Pastor for Senior Adults, First Baptist Church Decatur.