Belated Christmas

This post has been rattling around in my head since well before Christmas, but I'm still afraid I won't be able to type what I want to say clearly. Here goes nothing....

Psalm 40:1-3
"1 I waited patiently for the LORD;
he turned to me and heard my cry.
2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
out of the mud and mire;
he set my feet on a rock
and gave me a firm place to stand.
3 He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear
and put their trust in the LORD. "

Zephaniah 3:17
"The LORD your God is with you,
he is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing."

Singing, I have learned, is a whole body experience. When I sing, I sing from head to toe, everything working together to produce one melody, one lyric. There's a purity to it that I think is unique. One can "fake soul" much easier when playing an instrument, but for a singer your soul is your instrument. So the idea that God would lift me out of the mire and give me a song to sing has always meant to me a whole new path, a new soul, a new meaning, a new everything in my life.

Few people have the opportunity to glimpse the lives they missed, but I had a very clear picture of where I was going when I was in the mire. I thought of this over and over this Christmas: What if Jesus had never come? What if there were no advent of a savior, not just in the world, but in my own pitiful life? It could have been so different.

I would be trapped by my own idolatry, in a marriage to an abuser that I worshipped dutifully, displacing God's love and calling at the center of my life. I would be alienated from my friends, I would continue to stomp on the loving support of my family without regard for everything they've given me. And I would have had a very different feeling, deep down inside, when I saw 2 lines on a pregnancy test.

But God turned to me and heard my cry, and he brought me up out of the slimy pit and made my footsteps sure and now I sing a whole new song, mostly of gratitude. He came. He came. He really came to the nasty barns and the low class people like me who had sold themselves out for scraps of a life they wanted but couldn't see how to get.

He came and gave me a new song, a new path, a new soul, a whole new life. So my song has these lyrics: Nobody is ever too far gone. Our God is mighty to save.