Colors Bold and Bright

One of my favorite songs is by the group Dave Matthews Band.  It is entitle Grey Street.  It is written about a close friend of the band who committed suicide.  The author takes on her persona and is communicating the feelings of overwhelming hopelessness that she has.  It has always spoken to me because I feel that, although this woman was at the end of her rope, everyone can identify with her feelings.

The song starts out by eluding to her haunting memories.  During her daily life she "stumbles through her memories" and asks herself "Hey, how did it come to this?"  Don’t we all feel this way?  Aren't we all haunted by past mistakes?  What about those among us who are haunted with abuses?  Mental, verbal, or sexual… it's not just memories or your errors but of the terrible things that have been done to you.  So, what does she do?  She prays.  She prays to "God most every night", and "although she swears He doesn't listen, there's still a hope in her he might".  Because there's no response, she then decides to take "it on myself to get out of this place".  She dreams of "kicking out the windows and setting fire to this life" where she would "change everything about her using colors bold and bright, but all the colors blend together to grey".  In other words, the more she tries to fix it, the worse it gets.  To her, life is some kind of a trap that only constricts more as she struggles.  Ultimately, finding no other means of relief, she discovers that "though it's red blood bleeding from her now, it felt like cold blue ice in her heart."  She ends her life. 

How sad, but how accurate.  How often I have said to myself, "It's all a big nothing."  I mean, what's the point really?  Grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, repeat.  For what purpose?  And for those who are lost, that's it.  This song, while a song about an individual could just as well be the song of a dying generation.  People who have no hope and no future.  Yet, deep inside there is a longing for something more, and we are surrounded by it.  People are starving for something real.  They are so desperate that they will crawl into an oasis looking for water and finding none will drink the sand.

So what is the cure?  The same as it's always been, Jesus.  The only one who can give what Jeremiah called a "hope and a future."  Yes, I might get led into slavery as part of it, but I can't worry about that.  I can't worry about what is in my peripheral vision.  I have to stay focuses on Christ who knows me and loves me.  Who Paul says thinks of me as a brother.  People say that you should be careful about praying for God's will in your life because it could mean India.  To which I would say, what are you clinging to?  Do you not see how depressing and hopeless the cycle of life in America is?  We live in the Iowa of Christianity.  No scenery, no vision, no purpose.  Sometimes, I long for India.  I long for purpose and direction.  I long to change everything "using colors bold and bright".  Of course, I haven't done that yet.  I don't know what my purpose is.  Therefore, I have to stay focused on the Architect and remember…

This world is not my home.