Chasing Cars

Unlike the Bishop of Croydon, I'm not often given to quoting popular songs, but here is one - 'Chasing Cars' by Snow Patrol - that I've been asked to play at a funeral of a young man tomorrow:

We'll do it all Everything On our own

We don't need Anything Or anyone

If I lay here If I just lay here Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know How to say How I feel

Those three words Are said too much They're not enough

If I lay here If I just lay here Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told Before we get too old Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time Chasing cars Around our heads

I need your grace To remind me To find my own

If I lay here If I just lay here Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told Before we get too old Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am All that I ever was Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where Confused about how as well Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here If I just lay here Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfZUxPF7AMI

With a lot of songs like this I'm never quite sure if it's just pretentious twaddle, or something more profound that expresses a deep inner longing for something better. Let's assume it's the latter.

It seems to me that the singer feels the same way as The Teacher, the name given to the writer of Ecclesiastes 2500 years ago. He's not sure about what life is all about, but tries to find meaning in something. In this case it's in intimacy - but it's an intimacy that tries to blot out everything around it; an escape from the world rather than an entering into the world. The funeral I am taking tomorrow is of a young man who committed suicide, and perhaps this is what he thought.

'I don't quite know...how to say... how I feel,' is a cry for help. It makes me think of Munch's painting 'The Scream': a wordless cry expressing something very deep but intangible. Is he afraid of life, or of living I wonder? But at the same time the singer wants life in all its fulness: 'Show me a garden that's bursting into life.' What a positive image of hope and new life. This is what Jesus offered: "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." This is the life of the bursting garden for anyone who finds it.

'Let's waste time...chasing cars...around our heads.' The Teacher says there is a time for everything, even a time for wasting time - that's how I interpret his words 'A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them.'

'I need your grace to remind me to find my own.' I don't know what the singer is trying to find, but it's true that we all need grace - God's loving grace that helps us not only to find him, but to find ourselves and be content with who we are.

''I don't know where...confused about how as well...just know that these things will never change for us at all.' That's what the writer of Ecclesiastes thought - nothing changes; it's all meaningless. But Jesus challenges that in the ultimate expression of change - from death to life. I read this morning about the possibility of God's power at work in our lives: 'That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead...' If that is true, then I want to know more of that power at work in my life.