Holding On

Most people that know me well know that I like listening to Steven Curtis Chapman. I buy his CDs, I've been to one of his concerts, I check out his webpage from time-to-time. I'm a fan. It's not so much his music that I connect with, actually his music is pretty different than anything else I listen to. Instead, it's the words to the songs he writes that my heart tends to be drawn too. I have a list of his songs that I send to folks who I know are going through hard times, trials, etc., and this morning I listened to a couple of them on the way in to work. This one is titled "Hold on to Jesus," and it's from Steven's 1997 CD Signs of Life.

I have come to this ocean
And the waves of fear are starting to grow
The doubts and questions are rising with the tide
So I'm clinging to the one sure thing I know

Chorus:
I will hold on to the hand of my Savior
And I will hold on with all my might
I will hold loosely to things that are fleeting
And hold on to Jesus
I will hold on to Jesus for life

I've tried to hold many treasures
They just keep slipping through my fingers like sand
But there's one treasure that means more than breath itself
So I'm clinging to it with everything I am Chorus

Bridge:
Like a child holding on to a promise
I will cling to His word and believe
As I press on to take hold of that
for which Christ Jesus took hold of me Chorus

Here's the things that stood out to me this morning: the first stanza and chorus of this song seem to sum up pretty well my life these days. I imagined myself closing the door to my room at bedtime, coming to the bank of the ocean. As I pull back the covers, the fears do start to grow. Each night I wonder and think, "What will it be like tonight? Will this finally be the night of freedom and rest, or will this be another night of battle?" There are so many things about all this that I don't understand and can't even put into coherent thoughts. There is so much about what's real and what's not that is blurred these days for me. My ability to discern things accurately has greatly diminished, and so I have no choice but to believe in the one thing that I know for certain. It is outside me and beyond me, and that's a very good thing, because what's inside and around me may or may not be trustworthy.

So I hold on to Jesus. As cheesy as that sounds, that's what I do, night after night. And I gotta be honest, when I sing, read, hear that line "I will hold on to Jesus for life," for me the meaning isn't holding on to Jesus for life as in an amount of time, as in I will be doing this forever. No, for me it's holding on to Jesus for life like a man hangs onto a root sticking out of the mountain cliff he's just slipped and fallen over. It's holding on for life like a passeger holds onto to a piece of wood that's floating by off the ship she was on that just sunk. Holding on for life.