Danny ChaiI’ve written about this twice before, but whatever, feel like writing about it again.
We’re going through Genesis at church and it’s brought to mind one of my favorite songs of all time, Jacob and 2 Women by Rich Mullins. (Lyrics are the first ones on my deprecated, and somewhat embarrassing lyrics page.) Heartbreakingly beautiful song, with incredible lyrics, but if you say you understand it, you’re lying. It makes no sense whatsoever.
Because of that, when I got the chance to briefly talk to him after a concert in Humble, TX (which is a whole other story, but it was the best music experience of my life, even better than the Michael W. Smith acoustic tour, and if you laugh at either of my top 2, believe me, you would understand if you were there) I asked him about this song, and what it means.
I’ll never forget his response. He chuckled a bit (he’d clearly been asked about it before) and said, “Well, it’s just a story from the Bible, and sometimes it doesn’t seem to make much sense, but then again, neither does life, sometimes.”
I meditated upon his brief reply for a long time afterwards and I think it’s incredibly profound. It’s true – a lot of stories in the Bible don’t make sense at face value. But we shouldn’t be bothered by that; on the contrary, we should actually be encouraged. Because that shows that the Bible is true to human experience. The Bible tells us what we are as humans, how we got here, and what the solution is. If all the human stories in the Bible were neat and tidy, I’d be more inclined to question it, because that’s not how life really is; few things in life are neat and tidy. Life is messy and confusing as heck. And the Bible accurately reflects that.
I think sometimes we’re too eager to show how all the stories in the Bible come together and make perfect sense. It undoubtedly does come together, but there’s a lot of strange stuff also, the point of which I’m not sure I can understand this side of heaven. And that encourages me. Just helps me know that the Bible has something to say about my life as well, where lots of things I have no idea why they happen or what’s going on, but can still have hope and knowledge that there is a direction and plan, behind the scenes.
So yeah, the strange bits of the Bible encourage me because it tells me that it has something to say about my confusing life as well. I think that’s what Rich Mullins was trying to say, why the alternate title of the song is “The World As Best As I Can Remember It”, when there’s nothing in the song itself that says anything about the world, or his memories of it. Life is messy. Stories in the Bible are messy. And still, hope. I love that.
So yeah, one of my all time favorite songs.