this pain wouldn't be for Evermore
Fantastic Friday
The cloud cover has been toying with our solar-powered emotions all week and the daily temperature is a bouncy ball that won’t settle down. On the way to art class, my girls requested this specific song to match the mood. I obliged and we agreed it was totally the karaoke song of the day.
I wrote the rest of today’s post in the car on the way to a church member retreat, intending to edit/submit before bed. But a song that we sang together tonight gripped me enough that I knew I’d be staying up to rewrite, scrapping everything I typed beyond this initial Fantastic Friday song choice:
Taylor Swift’s and Bon Iver’s Evermore
We don’t listen to all the Swift discography, as my third and fifth graders aren’t ready for alllll the themes/content. But we have a little playlist of songs that I’m cool with letting them listen to and it gives us opportunities to chat about lyrics.
My daughters and I have talked about this song being a story about life and pressures pushing in on the artist until all is dark and cold. It’s a slow aching song that swells as a ray of hope eventually crashes through and brings a sense of relief in the message that the pain won’t always be.
And I couldn't be sure
I had a feeling so peculiar
This pain wouldn't be for
Evermore
this pain wouldn’t be forevermore
We need that message.
It’s a good message if your trees outside are hibernating and your skies are murky. It won’t stay like this. Spring will come. Or as Annie sang, “the sun’ll come out tomorrow…”
It’s a good message if your heart inside is tired and your thoughts are dark. It won’t stay like this. A light will break through. The warmth will return.
I know that light. And I genuinely pray for everyone to know the name of that light we’re all grasping for, trying to take hold of (whether we know it or not).
That light is Jesus
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
nor pain anymore
Because of Jesus, one day there will be no more pain to sing about.
No more dark days and needs for pause.
No more regrets and no more longings.
Because of Jesus, we can sing songs of hope.
God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Revelation 21:4)
When that day comes, everyone will see Jesus the way we were always meant to see him. And those who profess his name will spend forever singing with the angels and all the saints (believers) to the one who took away the pain and broke through the darkness.
for evermore
Tonight my church family gathered together and we sang beautiful songs that tell the full story of pain and hope. The story of the light that broke through into our aching world. Our voices blended together as we sang a song about praising Jesus forevermore. As we sang, we tasted what we will be doing in heaven forever and always.
O praise the Name of the Lord, our God
O praise His Name forevermore
For endless days we will sing Your praise
Oh Lord, oh Lord, our God
I’m amazed that we get to sing songs like this together.
Even on the days that are painful.
Even when it’s a fight to keep looking at the light of Jesus.
Even when it’s a hard and heavy choice to trust Jesus in a violent storm.
Jesus is there for those who call on him and we will sing about him for the rest of forever.
Swift’s “Evermore” drifts into a sigh at the end, like a comma as she ponders this strange feeling of hope. But the story we get to sing when we know the sure and lasting hope of Jesus is finalized with an “amen.”
Even while we still gasp under the keen reality of pain today, we can also be well-aquainted with the reality of hope in Jesus. And it’s all worth singing about.
I pray that you had a Fantastic Friday, friend, in the sense that hope broke through for you in some way big or small. I pray there is some sunshine in your day even with the cloud cover.
I pray that you know the hope of Jesus and that we’ll be singing together the universe’s longest lasting, most unimaginably glorious Fantastic Forever song for evermore.