The song seems to describe certain community dynamics. First clue is the title "Us". Granted, that could still pertain to just two people, but other clues that it's about a larger corporate community lie in the description of practical love that the first Christians in the book of Acts shared with one another:
-Sharing things in common - "you give to me in my time of need"
-The newness and mystery surrounding the Holy Spirit's spread of this new faith - "we live inside of a mystery that my heart often fails to contain"
-The sacraficing of self being one of the central principles Christ taught his disciples as emulated by the chorus.
-The idea of a socialist or communist community often associated with the first church in Acts - "I don't care if it's not fair (in other words, in context of the chorus, it's okay with me if I'm not getting my fair share)... now that I know the only thing that matters: us." The community is more important than the individual members.
-The disciples never knew where they would be led to preach the gospel next, they were just following the Holy Spirit's leading, and oftentimes that led them to places where they endured harsh persecution - "It's hard to say what road we're traveling down, sometimes it leads us through some awful towns."
-And finally, the last stanza seems to be speaking straight from the perspective of the apostle Paul, the greatest champion of the earliest Christian missionary endeavors who was blinded on the road to Damascus, where he realized how much of his former zealotry was wasted in persecuting the church before his conversion - "There was a time I lost my eyes. There was a day I wasted too much of your golden light."
The evidence seems strong that this song describes several different facets of the early spread of Christianity from the book of Acts.
The song seems to describe certain community dynamics. First clue is the title "Us". Granted, that could still pertain to just two people, but other clues that it's about a larger corporate community lie in the description of practical love that the first Christians in the book of Acts shared with one another:
-Sharing things in common - "you give to me in my time of need"
-The newness and mystery surrounding the Holy Spirit's spread of this new faith - "we live inside of a mystery that my heart often fails to contain"
-The sacraficing of self being one of the central principles Christ taught his disciples as emulated by the chorus.
-The idea of a socialist or communist community often associated with the first church in Acts - "I don't care if it's not fair (in other words, in context of the chorus, it's okay with me if I'm not getting my fair share)... now that I know the only thing that matters: us." The community is more important than the individual members.
-The disciples never knew where they would be led to preach the gospel next, they were just following the Holy Spirit's leading, and oftentimes that led them to places where they endured harsh persecution - "It's hard to say what road we're traveling down, sometimes it leads us through some awful towns."
-And finally, the last stanza seems to be speaking straight from the perspective of the apostle Paul, the greatest champion of the earliest Christian missionary endeavors who was blinded on the road to Damascus, where he realized how much of his former zealotry was wasted in persecuting the church before his conversion - "There was a time I lost my eyes. There was a day I wasted too much of your golden light."
The evidence seems strong that this song describes several different facets of the early spread of Christianity from the book of Acts.