Oh my GOSH!!! If you have about five to thirty minutes (depending on how many replays you have time for) consider taking a listen to this great song, Floodplain that I have linked here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivd7hBLmjqM for some spiritual time with God.
This song touched the corners of the soul that wonder at why one is still sitting close to drama of hard living at the edges of human frailty, while so many others sit up on comfortable ground.
It may be that if you relate to this song, you find yourself often sitting near others who drain you or are in desperation in your family, your work, or that in your very own life, you yourself are sitting there, often close to despair or anxiety or depression or in grief but drawn closer to the Lord because of it on a regular basis. Sara in fact, said she wrote this song because of that tendency of hers to notice her own tendency to do this.
Here are the lyrics.
“Some hearts are built on a floodplain
Keeping one eye on the sky for rain
You work for the ground that gets washed away
When you live closer
Closer to the life and the ebb and flow
Closer to the edge of I don’t know
Closer to that’s the way it goes
Some hearts are built on a floodplain
And it’s easy to sigh on a high bluff
Look down and ask when you’ve had enough
Will you have the sense to come on up
Or will you stay closer
Closer to the danger and the rolling deep
Closer to the run and the losing streak
And what brings us to our knees
Some hearts live here
Oh the river it rushes to madness
And the water it spreads like sadness
And there’s no high ground
And there’s no high ground
Closer to the danger and the rolling deep
Closer to the run and the losing streak
And what brings us to our knees
Closer to the life and the ebb and flow
Closer to the edge of I don’t know
Closer to Lord please send a boat
Some hearts are built here.”
A floodplain: an area of low-lying ground adjacent to a river, formed mainly of river sediments and subject to flooding. And I felt the Lord speak James 1:2-4 in it, and for one of the first times in my life, I really GOT this set of verses.
2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,[a] whenever you face trials of many kinds,3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
I stay close to the floodplain and I really don’t want to go up in the perfect living when I stop and think about how close it keeps me to the Lord, grows, me nourishes me and enriches me! (similar to the Fertile Crescent land that often flooded but then provided such rich nourishment I read about in ancient world studies with my kids).
For those who find themselves sitting on the edge of “that’s the way it goes,” often, or those who find themselves wounded, I hope someone else is just as blessed by this worshipful song and encouraged to keep sitting there close to Life and the ebb and flow and the hard things, allowing themselves to be flooded over for new and sure growth.