Beautiful Poetry, Music, and Truths

The first album by the Christian band Jars of Clay remains one of my favorite CDs, and I still listen to it regularly despite all the music I've collected since I first heard them in high school. One song on the CD continually grips me. Its message has reached me at various stages of life and on various continents (I have a very encouraging journal entry inspired by the song during a trip to Ecuador in 2002).

The song is titled "Worlds Apart" and what follows are some of the lyrics. I particularly love the poetry of the first verse in both the allusions to Icarus and the comparisonof the love of Jesus to the tears of a world embracing every heartache. When I finally grasped the image in that line alone I was amazed and reminded that, indeed, the love of Jesus is limitless. How many tears have I shed even in a world that does its best to flee from heartache?

Worlds Apart
By: Jars of Clay

I am the only one to blame for this
Somehow it all adds up the same
Soaring on the wings of selfish pride
I flew too high and like Icarus I collide
With a world I try so hard to leave behind
To rid myself of all but love
To give and die

To turn away and not become
Another nail to pierce the skin of one who loves
More deeply than the oceans,
More abundant than the tears
Of a world embracing every heartache

And can I be the one to sacrifice?
Or grip the spear and watch the blood and water flow?

To love you - take my world apart
To need you - I am on my knees
To love you - take my world apart
To need you - broken on my knees

All said and done I stand alone
Amongst remains of a life I should not own
It takes all I am to believe
In the mercy that covers me

Did you really have to die for me?
All I am for all you are
Because what I need and what I believe are worlds apart

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