This Skin and Bones is a Rental

Pondering on a Switchfoot song with you in mind. . .

(If that were a poem title, it would have been penned by Wordsworth)

This air feels strange to me

Feeling like a tragedy

I take a deep breath and close my eyes

One last time

Do I even need to say my thoughts here? These lines seem to describe so much of your life, not just the last six years. Did these lines go through your mind before you closed your eyes that final time? I can't know. Do you have any idea how hard it is that we don't get to know what you were thinking?

Storms on the wasteland

Dark clouds on the plains again

We were born into the fight

But I'm not sentimental

This skin and bones is a rental

And no one makes it out alive . . .

The first time I listened to this song in all its newness in sound and lyric, I choked. I choked on this line. This fallen body is a rental, a shadow of our real bodies to come. Sometimes we get stuck in the Wasteland, but we can't forget that we were born into the fight. We might not have caused the fight, the struggle, the dark, consuming clouds. . .but we have both been through them. In some ways, I think we both contributed to one another's sorrow, though it was not intentional at the disparate times it happened.

Until I die I'll singe these songs 

on the shores of Babylon 

still looking for a home 

in a world where I belong

Where the weak are finally strong

Where the righteous right the wrongs

Still looking for a home

In a world where I belong

A world where I belong

This is another set of lines that seem to sum up years. . . So often it seemed like you were looking for a home, a world where you belonged. Where you fit. This world didn't seem to be the right shape for you in many ways. But I know that you fit in and are fit for the Kingdom.

This body's not my home

This world is not my own

But I still can hear the sound

Of my heart beating out

This flimsy earth body is not our Home—Home is the Kingdom. And the King will clothe us in the wedding garments of the Kingdom when we arrive. We? No. . . I only mean myself. You are already clothed in the real body of the Kingdom. And, oh! How I wish I could hear your heart beating out its tattoo as I am enfolded in your hug. 

And on that final day I die

I want to hold my head up high

I want to tell you that I tried

To live it like a song

I know you did. I know you tried. You lived it like a song, my friend.

And when I reach the other side

I want to look you in the eye

And know that I've arrived

In a world where I belong

You got to go first. . . It's not right, you know. You're younger. I should be teaching you the way of the Kingdom, but it will be you teaching me. Even though I can't look you in the eyes yet, I know that you have arrived. You belong. 

______

"Where I Belong" by Jon Foreman / Michael Elizondo / Tim Foreman