So I've been thinking about the title of this blog and how I bet it's semi-confusing to people. I saved this blog address and title several years ago and hadn't done anything with it for a long time. Mrs. Potter's Lullaby is my favorite song by the band Counting Crows, and possibly one of my favorite songs of all time. The background behind the lyrics of this song are that the lead singer saw the movie Patch Adams and fell madly in love with the actress Monica Potter. He went home from the theater that night and wrote this song. I love it because it's everything about him that he wants her to know --- a completely genuine attempt to put everything out on the line for her in hopes that she will talk to him. They end up meeting, and dating, and breaking up in the real life --- the story behind it all is pretty cool.
The different lines of the song really hit me at different points in my life. This past week, this stanza is particularly on my mind:
"Well, there's a piece of Maria in every song that I sing And the price of a memory is the memory of the sorrow it brings And there is always one last light to turn out and one last bell to ring And the last one out of the circus has to lock up everything"
Maria is his first love, and he unapologetically explains that pieces of her are part of his story. I'm sure I over-analyze a lot of the verses of this song, but I don't really care. If I can find a blessing in something, I'll take it! :)
So I've been thinking about this song in terms of my life, and if I had to tell someone I was trying to convince to date me, everything about me that they needed to know and I wanted to tell them, I would pick Romans 5 as a starting point. I think it was last summer that I really started to get what this verse means. For awhile my little green purse Bible fell open to this section of scripture on its own since I was reading it so much. I think the part about being hemmed in by troubles always catches my attention, but it also offers so many ways that God uses those troubles. You can't lose. So awesome.
1-2By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that's not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.
3-5There's more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we're hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. In alert expectancy such as this, we're never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can't round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
6-8Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn't, and doesn't, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn't been so weak, we wouldn't have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him.
I'm still pondering in my heart a lot of the things that have happened in my life over the past few weeks. I'm excited to share some things that I learned. I am blessed to be able to say that I'm starting to really feel the part of this scripture that says "We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise."
Finding myself standing where I always hoped I might stand,
Beth
Love, Love Love.
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