Carry On

Carry On
by David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash and Neil Young

This morning I woke up and I knew
You were really gone
A new day, a new way, I knew
I should see it along
Go your way, I'll go mine
Carry on

Holy Week is a roller-coaster ride of emotions. For those of us who know “how the story ends”, I believe that we feel complicity, remorse, guilt, and contrition, and then there is a very deep and profound sense of thanks – thanks to the Lord for loving us, for dying for us, for saving us. But the one thing we don’t have to worry about is whether or not Jesus will get up. We have the benefit of history and of the Truth written in our hearts. I think about all Jesus’ disciples and friends waking up on that Saturday morning. The horrors of Good Friday are past and their friend is dead. Those of us who have lost a loved one know something of that feeling – waking up that first morning and feeling that part of us is dead, too.

The sky is clearing and the night
Has gone out
The sun, he come, the world
is all full of light
Rejoice, rejoice, we have no choice
But to carry on

The Israelites were no strangers to suffering and waiting. After the 40 years of wandering, after the Babylonian captivity, they were accustomed to waiting. They still think we’re waiting for the promised Messiah, I guess, now that I think about it. The prophet Zephaniah was quite a bearer of “doom and gloom”. But, at the end of his book, there are some amazing and wonderfully optimistic verses, pointing to the future:

On that day they will say to Jerusalem,
"Do not fear, Zion;
do not let your hands hang limp.
The LORD your God is with you,
the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you;
in his love he will no longer rebuke you,
but will rejoice over you with singing."
– Zephaniah 3:16-17

I guess there are two ways to look at that “do not let your hands hang limp” phrase. On the one hand, experts say that when people are depressed, they don’t swing their arms. Now, I will admit that, even before I had ever heard that, I had noticed that people in New York City don’t seem to swing their arms as much as people back home – I didn’t know why, but I had just noticed that. Then one day, some friends and I at work were discussing whether the arm swinging part was a cause or an effect. We wondered if people could intentionally swing their arms and thereby elevate their moods. I mentioned that maybe all those older folks you see “power walking” at the mall were actually improving their disposition. A couple of days later, one of my co-workers came to work and related a strange dream she had had. She said, “I dreamed I was severely depressed and was walking around, not swinging my arms. In my dream I decided to just jump off the Golden Gate Bridge. But as I did and the air rushed around me, the turbulence started to make my arms flap about . . . and I started to feel great! But I had already jumped off the top of the bridge. And I remember the last thing, before I woke up, was thinking, 'Damn!'”

And another way to think about it is to just “keep on keeping on,” as I've heard people say. "For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart (Hebrews 12:3)." In other words, carry on.

The fortunes of fables are able
To sing the song
Now witness the quickness with which
We get along
To sing the blues you've got to live the tunes
Carry on

For those of you who have been along with me on this Lenten adventure, “living the tunes”, thank you! Your readership and comments are greatly appreciated, and humbling. There will be an Easter post, and then week or so hiatus before the blog comes back in a somewhat different form. But back to today’s thoughts . . .

In the 2000 film Cast Away, Tom Hanks’ character is marooned on a South Pacific island for 1,500 days. At the end of the film, he tells Helen Hunt how he got through the times when he didn’t know how long it would be before he was rescued, if ever: “And I know what I have to do now. I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?”

Even those of us on this side of Easter know that it can be hard sometimes, just to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I think, for those disciples who weren’t sure at the time how the story would end, this time from Good Friday to Easter morning must have been dark times, indeed. And then, suddenly . . .

At that time I will gather you;
at that time I will bring you home.
I will give you honor and praise
among all the peoples of the earth
when I restore your fortunes
before your very eyes,"
says the LORD.
– Zephaniah 3:20

“Before our very eyes.” And so we wait. To us, it’s a brief moment. To the disciples, it might have seemed an eternity. But something amazing awaits us tomorrow.

Carry on
Love is coming
Love is coming to us all . . .