Come, You Disconsolate is often misunderstood to be a call to come to Christ to be saved from sin – likely because of its prominence at revivals during the Second Great Awakening in the first half of the nineteenth century. Instead, the text celebrates God’s extravagant love and grace that can help us through a particularly difficult time in life, or when it is tough to forgive oneself. Matthew 11:28 serves as a scriptural underpinning: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” The word disconsolate is used to describe someone who is holding sorrow and cannot be consoled.
Come, you disconsolate, where’er you languish; come to the mercy seat*, fervently kneel!
Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish: Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.
Joy of the desolate, light of the straying, hope of the penitent, fadeless and pure!
Here speaks the Comforter, tenderly saying, “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot cure.”
Here see the bread of life; see waters flowing forth from the throne of God, pure from above:
Come to the feast of love; come, ever knowing, Earth has no sorrow but heaven can remove.
The phrase ”mercy seat” in the first verse refers to Exodus, which describes it as a place in the Tabernacle called the “holy of holies,” at the top of the Ark of the Covenant, flanked by two carved angels, where only Moses or a high priest could enter to offer sacrifice, and where God declares “there I will meet with you.” The other biblical reference to the mercy seat is when Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb of Jesus to find it empty, with two angels sitting at the head and foot of where the body had laid. The reference to the mercy seat is clear (and it is intriguing that Mary Magdalene is put in the role of Moses or a high priest) and connects the dots with the first verse.
I Am Enough – Nancy Besack
I was gifted with certain things,
But not others. I am enough.
It’s very hard for me to memorize music
And I’ve blown it a few times.
But I’ve touched people’s hearts.
That is enough. I am enough.
I have a very average IQ. A recent
CT scan showed nothing in my brain.
No surprise.
But I am enough.
My house has more clutter than I’d prefer.
I am enough.
I make mistakes.
I am still enough because God made me
Enough.
I’ll keep trying to be all of what
God wants me to be,
But I will keep remembering that
I am loved, even when I fail.
Because I am enough.
You are enough.
Pray for Forgiveness – Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys’ Pray for Forgiveness paints a picture of a moment where someone has hit rock bottom – lost hope because they can’t forgive themselves. The lyrics are imbued with messages of hope – a reminder that looking within yourself to find the strength to forgive yourself is the solution.
My self-delusions are leaving me in the storm
Taking for granted all the goodness that I’ve found
Somewhere I lost all, the control came crashing down
Look to my mother, call to the captain, can’t you see this state that I’m in
And no one would know this, nobody noticed, cuz it’s me where it begins
Cuz I need some comfort to regain my sanity
And I don’t wanna feel this crazy, I don’t wanna feel discarded
Shattered into million pieces, I’m so brokenhearted
Nowhere left to run. Nowhere left to go. So I hope
Look to my mother, call to the captain, can’t you see this state that I’m in
And no one would know this, nobody noticed that it’s me where it begins
And I pray for forgiveness within
I think of every little stupid mistake that has been made
This time I don’t have the strength to gather myself and I’m falling to pieces
Look to my mother, call to the captain, can’t you see this state that I’m in
I pray for forgiveness, looking for justice, searching for answers, call to my mother
Pray for forgiveness, breaking the silence. and nobody knows this, nobody noticed
That it’s me where it begins
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Amazing Grace
Amazing Grace has a complicated history. Written by former slave trader John Newton 1773, there is a misconception that Newton wrote the text as an apology for his participation in the slave trade. While he later became an abolitionist in 1788, he wrote the opening line to express his conversion to Christianity after a near-death experience when a slave ship encountered a violent storm.
Newton had a troubled life. His mother died when he was six years old and at eighteen he was captured into service in the Royal Navy. He tried to desert, but was caught and punished in front of the entire crew. He contemplated murdering the captain and then throwing himself overboard, but by the time his physical and mental health recovered, he was transferred to a slave trading ship in 1745. He didn’t get along with the crew and was conscripted into slavery for the ship captain’s wife, a princess in present day Sierra Leone. Rescued in 1748, he went back into the slave trade for several years, before becoming an Anglican priest.
Newton came out with a forceful denunciation of slavery and contrition for his late confession, saying “it will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders.” He worked alongside leading abolitionist William Wilberforce and lived to see the passage of the British Slave Trade Act of 1807.
Newton’s hymn wasn’t well received in England, but became widely used during the Second Great Awakening at revival meetings where thousands of people, white and black alike, would gather. Amazing Grace became adopted by slaves as well as the black church in the north to express the desire for freedom and liberation, and later civil rights, making it their own and creating the context in which we view the hymn today – a common humanity of pain, yearning, joy, and peace.
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.
‘Twas grace first taught my heart to fear and grace my fears relieved;
how precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed.
Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;
’tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.
When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,
we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.