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Fade To Grey Lyrics
<b>.:: Fade to Grey ::.</b>
It's not hard to know what you're thinking
When you look down on me now
Your trance of love is seeking
To turn this world around
But in my state of blind confusion
No God can pull me out
I see your love is willing
To turn me inside out
And then I see you there
The lonely tears I cry
I wish they'd release me
It's in despair that I find faith
Summon the night to bow down to day
When ignorance is bliss
Save me from myself
<i>Chorus:</i>
And then I see You there
With Your arms open wide and You try to embrace me
These lonely tears I cry
They keep me in chains and I wish they'd release me
Cold is the night but
Colder still is the heart made of stone, turned from clay
And if you follow me
You'll see all the black, all the white fade to grey
Fade to grey
Fade to grey
<i>[Chorus x 2]</i>
When you look down on me now
Your trance of love is seeking
To turn this world around
But in my state of blind confusion
No God can pull me out
I see your love is willing
To turn me inside out
The lonely tears I cry
I wish they'd release me
Summon the night to bow down to day
When ignorance is bliss
Save me from myself
With Your arms open wide and You try to embrace me
These lonely tears I cry
They keep me in chains and I wish they'd release me
Cold is the night but
Colder still is the heart made of stone, turned from clay
And if you follow me
You'll see all the black, all the white fade to grey
Fade to grey
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The best darn Jars song perioed!!
Aboslutely my fav song by them!!
i wonder if by 'You'll see all the black, all the white fade to grey' dan is referring to the mingling of Christ's white spirit and our black spirit turning ours to grey?
Good observation buzz, and this used to be my all-time favorite Jars track, but now it is Thou Lovely Source of True Delight.
this song is entirely about being lost.
the fading to grey is an illustration of right and wrong joining in his eyes, and he can't find the path he ought to be following.
he intermixes it with the picture of god's willingness to save him "and then i see you there with your arms open wide" etc.
basically, this song covers what it's like to be dazed and confused living your life apart from god, and the plea of having god come correct your ills.
I personally struggled with the idea of black and white fading to gray for a long time though this is also one of my favorites songs from Jars.
But at the end what left me satisfied about its meaning is when I lived through the process itself: At the beginning when you give your life to Christ, you start to contrast everything with God. if you become religious, you'll believe everything is black and white. If you truly love Jesus, you'll see that nothing is black or white because our incapacity to perceive things objectively. When you grow as a Christian, you start talking less, judging less, hating less and loving more, even whom doesn't "deserve" to be loved. It's the greatest instance of humbleness: to assert less and to ask more.
So I must disagree with Wackdee in that this song (to me at least) does not cover what is like to be living our lifes apart from God, but just the opposite: "When ignorance is bliss" Wow, "SAVE ME FROM MYSELF!" It is not about a person who doesn't know God and gets to know him but about a person who already loves God and finds out that is not a exactly the God he though it was, but recognizes that the real God wants to turn him inside-out, breaking paradigms and humbling our assertions of what is good or bad to the gray of love that before condemning, loves unconditionally.
I agree with oviazcan, it is clearly telling of an encounter with God. I think it's about being in despair and confusion and then discovering Jesus' passionate longing for us ('then I see you there with your arms open wide and you try to embrace me').
The lyrics are very powerful, and express beautifully the intense experience when you are close to despair and then suddenly see God's loving presence very clearly. I find those moments hard to describe, but the chorus does it very well.
One of my favorite songs, text and music fit together nicely.
I think this song is about a Christian's struggle with bitterness toward God. It is the "dark night of the soul" experience when a believer is going through a rough time and experiencing much grief "These lonely tears I cry/They keep me in chains and I wish they'd release me" The believer knows that God can reach out to him and give comfort "With Your arms open wide and You try to embrace me" and he also knows the consequences of turning from God "Cold is the night but/Colder still is the heart made of stone, turned from clay" There aren't many people more bitter than those who experience God and then turn from him and turn their hearts to stone.
Much like what oviazcan said, it is the experience of a believer growing in God. It's much like C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed where the believer knows the right thing to think and how God is but his emotions and feelings fight against his knowledge. There was a struggle between Lewis' knowledge of who God was and how he felt toward God in his time of grief.
When you first become a Christian you do see things as very black and white but as you grow you come to realize that the only thing that is truly black and white is Christ's sacrifice and everything else is very gray. Our grief is characterized in this song as being black and white because when you go through a hard time you see things in extremes. In the end God promises that if we follow him that will fade to gray.
I think the song is talking about what A.W. Tozer called "the souls paradox of love". He said that those that have found God pursue Him hard, whereas religionists are too easily satisfied and after they say a prayer or walk an aisle or make a decision they have no need of God.
I think the song is talking about what A.W. Tozer called "the souls paradox of love". He said that those that have found God pursue Him hard, whereas religionists are too easily satisfied and after they say a prayer or walk an aisle or make a decision they have no need of God.
Jesus said that all that come to Him and drink would never thirst again. But why will they never thirst again? Because they have rivers of living water flowing from within them. Meaning that those who believe in Christ, have Christ living...
Jesus said that all that come to Him and drink would never thirst again. But why will they never thirst again? Because they have rivers of living water flowing from within them. Meaning that those who believe in Christ, have Christ living within, so that they are perpetually drinking Him. So, when he says that Christians never thirst, he means they never go outside of Christ to quench their thirst. But to be a believer is to perpetually drink Christ - which means we perpetually thirst for Him. Living people need air, food and water. Dead people don't.
We are too quick to define Christianity as being satisfied with a decision we have made. We categorize the world into black and white. People that are satisfied in their decision to receive Christ and people that are not. Unfortunately, those that still desire more of Christ we lump into the "have not" category. But to love Christ is sometimes to go through darkness or night. We grieve for our own sin, and doubts. We are not as faithful to God as he is to us. Christians are not those that do not go through darkness and feel spiritual grief and spiritual hunger and thirst. Christians are those that constantly return to Christ for protection and nourishment. Better to go through that coldness than to be satisfied with our stoney religious heart.
C.S. Lewis said it this way in his book surprised by joy:
"True, it was desire, not possession. But then what I had felt on the walk had also been desire, and only possession in so far as that kind of desire is itself desirable, is the fullest possession we can know on earth; or rather, because the very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting. There, to have is to want to want is to have. Thus, the very moment when I longed to be stabbed again, was itself again such a stabbing."
I think his "state of blind confusion" is the state of seeing everything as grey. He is having a tough time seeing the difference between the black and white of what is wrong and what is right, and he keeps falling into sin even though he believes in Christ.
I don't think that the closer we grow to Jesus, the more we see things as grey. Rather, I think grey is where we start as a Christian and unfortunately it is also where we can fall. Sometimes we can be so surrounded by blacks and whites that confusion is all that remains.
Grey also reminds me of the lukewarm church. We're told in the scriptures that being a lukewarm Christian is worse than being cold or hot. Revelation 3:15-16 talks about how the lukewarm will be cast out. Check out 1 John 2:15-16 as well: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world–the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions–is not from the Father but is from the world."
Gaining a closer relationship with Christ gives us eyes to see more clearly. Eyes to discern between right and wrong, and eyes that enable us to step out of this shade of grey that we all so often find ourselves. Through Christ we are able to see the fine line between black and white, and see just how much Jesus had to sacrifice of Himself to save us.
I think the whole meaning of "fade to grey" depends on who is saying the line "if you follow me you'll see all the black, all the white fade to grey." Which now I admittedly have to say it sounds like the the person in despair and not God. I really thought that at first, it was God saying that.
I think the whole meaning of "fade to grey" depends on who is saying the line "if you follow me you'll see all the black, all the white fade to grey." Which now I admittedly have to say it sounds like the the person in despair and not God. I really thought that at first, it was God saying that.
But then, I have to say, being human, all we can really see are shades of grey. Do we have the mind of God to see how things work out in our lives? Sure,...
But then, I have to say, being human, all we can really see are shades of grey. Do we have the mind of God to see how things work out in our lives? Sure, we see glimpses...and maybe some see more than a glimpse if God allows us, but all WE ever experience is mostly what we see with our own two eyes and our feeble hearts and minds. At least in this life. If we were to take our form of Black and White, I would argue that it is nothing compared to the Black and White that God sees. I would argue that only God can truly see in Black and White. Only God can ever see the full truth and only God can see rightly into a person's heart.
So while I don't think that God is saying "follow me, you'll see all this B/W fade to grey". I think in the process of seeking God, we realize that what we thought to be true is not so clear cut, because we don't see with the eyes of God. And BECAUSE things are not so cut and dried, we HAVE to rely on faith to know that God will pull us through the grey. It is only when God is working on us that we can even START to see the Black and White...but even then, I think the maxim holds true: The more I know, the more I know that I don't know. The more we realize we have to be "turned inside out".
When we are at peace with our inability to see Black and White like God does, we can learn the humility to let God teach us to see what we can...and to not sweat what we can't.
Well at least that's my take! This song is really speaking into my life right now because I am trying to see the Black and White...without God's help. I need to let go and really sink back into His essence...let God transform my stone heart back to clay.
This song has always felt very honest and comes across as genuine because it doesn't resolve (like many of JoC's songs) in a clear resolution or path forward.
It's about the comedy of the human condition. Everyone knows one thing but does another, or says one thing but does another, or understands the difference between good and evil but ends up doing both.
The entire song is the singer laughing at themselves, and how goofy they must appear to God, who sees the obvious good path from above and likely is frustrated as to why human beings can want what is good and even talk all kinds of truth about what they believe is good and then when they actually do things in life they go completely off the rails.
I especially like the later refrain where he very directly says God's arms are reaching out to embrace him, but because of where he is it feels like chains and he wishes God would let him go. There is a bit of a darker meaning here, they could be alluding to it - not sure.
It happens so often in spiritual growth - the things guiding us towards the best outcomes often feel like torture and brute force when we want something else.
If you follow what someone does, not what they say they believe, you often find that the black and white beliefs that are expressed don't match up - the black and white ideas fade to grey in action.
And that's being human. I appreciate that a Christian songwriter can write such a great song about such a terrifying moment to get stuck in. Kicking against the goads, so to speak, sucks.