In a nutshell, “How will I come to know you best, God? How have you designed me to come to know You? Scripture (right word/good advice) and contemplation (quiet room) or the imperfect community of church and the hard lessons of life (the broken word/tapestry/altarpiece)?”
The rain bird seems to me to be the life of innate, effortless grace, where God’s presence is obvious and manifest.
The majesty snowbird is the more common life of quiet suffering, the snow falling upon us, piling high on our shoulders like epaulets. But if we endure it, if we soldier through, we will emerge into the majesty from “winter” before those with an easier life (or before we ourselves would had we not been blessed with hard life lessons).
The chorus is God saying, don’t let the suffering break you. Know you have a place and that I am there with you. This life is the life i designed for you because it’s the life you need.
Thinking about this reminded me of the documentary Into Great Silence. There’s almost no dialogue in the film, which examines life in a monastery in Europe…but toward the end one of the monks speaks. He’s blind, decrepit, and looks to have been there for decades. He says he is thankful that God has made him blind, because he knows that God is both infinitely good and infinitely wise and therefore his blindness is a gift God has given him for the good of his soul.
Some may know by word alone, some need suffering to drive them to contemplation and through that find God.
In a nutshell, “How will I come to know you best, God? How have you designed me to come to know You? Scripture (right word/good advice) and contemplation (quiet room) or the imperfect community of church and the hard lessons of life (the broken word/tapestry/altarpiece)?”
The rain bird seems to me to be the life of innate, effortless grace, where God’s presence is obvious and manifest.
The majesty snowbird is the more common life of quiet suffering, the snow falling upon us, piling high on our shoulders like epaulets. But if we endure it, if we soldier through, we will emerge into the majesty from “winter” before those with an easier life (or before we ourselves would had we not been blessed with hard life lessons).
The chorus is God saying, don’t let the suffering break you. Know you have a place and that I am there with you. This life is the life i designed for you because it’s the life you need.
Thinking about this reminded me of the documentary Into Great Silence. There’s almost no dialogue in the film, which examines life in a monastery in Europe…but toward the end one of the monks speaks. He’s blind, decrepit, and looks to have been there for decades. He says he is thankful that God has made him blind, because he knows that God is both infinitely good and infinitely wise and therefore his blindness is a gift God has given him for the good of his soul.
Some may know by word alone, some need suffering to drive them to contemplation and through that find God.
I analyze a lot of sufjan songs here: http://mindthatknowsitself.tumblr.com