David’s Secret Chord
I think Jeff Buckly wrote better than he knew when he sang of some secret chord that David played that pleased the Lord. There’s something about certain musical or lyrical progressions that stir something warm in us. Music, like nothing else, can reach into the inner corridors of our souls and draw out something ineffable, something of another world. It’s nostalgia mixed with relief and topped with a warm hug. We all have a longing for a world to which we’ve never been, like a song we’ve forgotten. I think this song evokes that.
It’s odd, though, that this song would feel that way. The group that wrote this song did so at the early height of the pandemic, when we all were glued to our screens in horror while numbers rose as furiously as the voices screamed. I can still recall with perfect clarity the images of body bags piling up outside of New York City hospitals, and the ghastly clip of a bulldozer covering mass graves on an abandoned river island.
Through those days we experienced a cultural anxiety that we haven’t known in my memory. Questions were large and answers were few while death crouched at the periphery of every moment like a menacing eye floater. Everybody was whipped up to an emotional froth by the fear and isolation. Just writing about it knots up my stomach.
I felt lost and broken, as I’m sure all of us did to some level. It was an extended night of fear and doubt. Yet this song reminds us that the call for the Christian life today is the same it was in those days: still trust in my good Father. Bow to One great King. Persist in your faith.
It’s existentially disorienting to not have answers, especially in a society that thinks it has all the answers. But we have the answer that matters most — God is good. And in those moments when we reach the end of our ability to control anything, when we lose even the most basic experiences we need for normalcy, we can, perhaps for the first time, sit in the silence that only He can fill. Sometimes it takes us losing everything we want before we see the emptiness of this world and throw up our hands, exhausted, simply sighing out, “Your will be done.” Those are the bitterest and sweetest moments that shape our souls, when, at the end of ourselves, God quietly shows up and sits with us in that dark room.
Singing “your will be done” is always, by nature, aspirational. When I sing this, I’m not proclaiming that every part of me is currently fully surrendered, because I know I’m not fully sanctified yet. It’s not as easy as the nauseatingly ubiquitous “let go and let God” makes it
sound. Surrender is ugly work. As David Foster Wallace put it, “everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks in it.”
More often, surrender is a resignation of my ability to control or explain things. It’s a painful comfort that is based on another world. It’s the same agonizing surety that Jesus felt in the garden when He gasped through bloody tears, “not my will.”
This is a song expressing trust and surrender amidst life’s cold, misty road when I realize my map is worthless and my compass is broken. It’s a reminder for the moments on my journey when I’m not sure how much I have left to give. It’s a call to trudge on, knowing that at the end of the path is a warm cabin and a steaming cup of hot chocolate, and that, despite everything, Jesus is still there, stoking the fireplace, waiting to welcome me with a long hug and a warm blanket.
Written by: Danny Nathan, Worship Director