Lent: Swift and Beautiful

Lent calls for a reality check.  We often live two lives...the one that represents our ideals and best Facebook-worthy moments, and the one where we settle into old habits and lost opportunities.    As a songwriter, I write songs that probably make me sound highly spiritually attuned, but pull back my curtain, and I'm often wasting time, skipping Bible study, short with my kids, cold toward my husband, and the list goes on.  Ahem...let's just close that curtain and keep you out of my business.

Frances Havergal wrote the great consecration hymn, Take My Life and Let it Be, in 1874.  She wrote it first and then, throughout her life, chose to live it.  She wrote, "Take my voice and let me sing always, only, for my King," which eventually led her to only sing sacred music and give up singing with the Philharmonic.  She wrote, "Take my silver and my gold/ Not a mite shall I withhold," and one day packed up her massive jewelry collection and donated all but 2 family pieces.

I have always been drawn to the line in her song, "Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee."  It represents the kind of servant I want to be, racing to the need and helping someone in a beautiful way.  But, honestly, I hold back, often not willing to dive into anyone's mess.  I am not swift about service most of the time, and there's usually nothing particularly beautiful about it.  I plug away at the mundane chores of life, trying to add little touches of beauty.  I reach occasionally for the higher ideals and am grateful for the blessings that come from them.

Much of life is not a lush, beautiful, orchestral piece, but a plainsong, hummed over the sink.  It's like these words I penned one particularly humbling day...

This is not the song I meant to write

It's lacking insight

And a heavenly melody

It’s just the psalm of a tired mom

An ordinary song

From the kitchen chapel, drinking Snapple

Washing dishes, praying wishes

But there is always a need that I can meet, just as Christ offered his abundance for my deficit, and my feet can learn, eventually, to be swift and beautiful about it.