Take these shoes
Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes and make them fit
Take this shirt
Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt and make it clean, clean
Take this soul
Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul and make it sing, sing
Yahweh, Yahweh
Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh
Still I’m waiting for the dawn
I love listening to U2 because they take me to deep places. An album is a a journey of highs and lows and of celebration and mourning. It is like life. You get a little of both and one gives context to the other. Their album How to dismantle an Atomic Bomb takes us on that same journey and the end point is to come to the thrown of God. Yahweh.
There are good times. There are bad times. There are times when we feel like the wind is at our back. There are times when life just feels hard. A person who’s had a little of both just throws their arms up in the air to God as a child does with his daddy. You realize whether you have a lot or you have a little it matters not. You have nothing.
And that’s when you say, “Take this soul, stranded in some skin and bones. Take this soul and make it sing.” That moment doesn’t come easily. There’s always pain before a child is born.
Still I’m waiting for the dawn.
I love that line. There’s another U2 line, a more famous one, that goes like this: “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
If you rewind my life a few years you’ll find a proud, arrogant young man. Being broken takes the pride out of you. Brokenness gives birth to compassion. When you realize you’re wearing a dirty, polyester white trash made in nowhere shirt — everyone in the world becomes your brother or your sister. There’s no longer just you and everyone else. There’s just us.
Take these hands
Teach them how to carry
Take these hands, don’t make a fist, no
Take this mouth
So quick to criticise
Take this mouth, give it a kiss
I once read that when Bono came to America and spoke to Christians about giving money to fight AIDS in Africa that he said it was like getting blood out of a stone. Does our heart not hurt when we see another man, woman, or child suffer? Is the entire world not our sisters and our brothers?
Take this heart
Take this heart
Take this heart
And make it break
This post is the eighth in a 52 week series through 2012 on meditations drawn from U2 lyrics. To find out more read this intro to the series.
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