Devotional Spirituality

That was the river, this is the sea, by The Waterboys, is an interesting twist on Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone in its pointed comments about someone having a difficult time dealing with reality. Here the person the song is directed to is having a difficult time dealing with the difference between the world they inhabit now, and the way people and things are, versus sometime in the past. It is reminiscent of Job, where he was having his own pity party about his life in chapter 17.

The wonderful thing about life in Christ is we are wholly dependent on the great I am--the one who is always present in our lives and connected to us in prayer. He has freed us from a past that makes us stumble, or from overreaching into a future we have little clue about. He is the one who is with us in this moment, and the next moment, and the next--he will never leave us, he will never forsake us. He frees us from defining ourselves by our idea of what ought to be, and instead defines us by his love for us.

 

"He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom people spit. My eye has grown dim from grief, and all my members are like a shadow. The upright are appalled at this, and the innocent stir themselves up against the godless. Yet the righteous hold to their way, and they that have clean hands grow stronger and stronger. But you, come back now, all of you, and I shall not find a sensible person among you. My days are past, my plans are broken off, the desires of my heart." Job 17

These things you keep

You'd better throw them away

You wanna turn your back

On your soulless days

Once you were tethered and now you are free

Once you were tethered well now you are free

That was the river this is the sea!

Now if you're feelin' weary if you've been alone too long

Maybe you've been suffering from a few too many plans that have gone wrong

And you're trying to remember how fine your life used to be

Running around banging your drum like it's 1973

Well that was the river this is the sea! Wooo!

Now you say you've got trouble you say you've got pain

You say've got nothing left to believe in

Nothing to hold on to nothing to trust nothing but chains

You're scouring your conscience raking through your memories

Scouring your conscience raking through your memories

But that was the river this is the sea yeah!

Now I can see you wavering as you try to decide

You've got a war in your head and it's tearing you up inside

You're trying to make sense of something that you just can't see

Trying to make sense now and you know you once held the key

But that was the river and this is the sea!

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!

Now I hear there's a train

It's coming on down the line

It's yours if you hurry

You've got still enough time

And you don't need no ticket and you don't pay no fee

No you don't need no ticket you don't pay no fee

Because that was the river and this is the sea!

Behold the sea!