It was a Friday afternoon last October and I was packing for a weekend in Texas. I was heading out alone and decided to download a book as a companion for the journey. I'd always been a Beuchner fan but it had been a while since I had visited his work. I looked through his seemingly endless catalogue until I ran across one I wasn't familiar with: The Longing for Home.
I had been writing for months now and felt as if the season was nearing its completion. Up to this point the song writing content seemed to circle around the journey of life “from everyday to eternity.” So I confess I was secretly hoping Beuchner just might offer an insightful bookend for the theme of this record.
Around this time I had two Grandparents who were approaching the end of their faithful journeys and now we were only waiting to say our goodbyes. In the midst of this, my aunt (their daughter) was diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer. While my own personal compromised health paled in comparison I was still in the throes of fighting a bad case of mono with recurrent respiratory infections and was generally feeling as if my quality of life had fallen into the same chasm of disappointment and loss my family was feeling as a whole. 1 + 1 didn't seem to equal 2 at the moment and life was offering an equation that wasn't adding up. So I began to ask questions. What really matters in life? What really matters to God? I became so full with longing...for answers only the hope of eternity seemed to carry.
“...I also know the sense of sadness and lostness that comes with feeling that you are a stranger and exile on the earth and that you would travel to the ends of that earth and beyond if you thought you could ever find the homeland that up till now you have only glimpsed from afar. Where do you go to search for it? Where have I myself searched?”
F. Beuchner
As I read these words I could feel my eyes welling up. These thoughts about eternity only enlarged the center it had recently swallowed of my own heart. Beuchner talked about the places he had searched for it, mainly in his own writings but what I was about to read next would impact me more than any other commentary in his book.
“In between periods of actually writing down words on the white page before me, my eyes almost always glance off to the left...I am not really seeing anything or doing anything in the usual sense of the term...I am simply letting an empty place open up inside myself and waiting for something to fill it. And every once and so often, praise God, something does. The character who speaks something closer to the truth than I can imagine having ever come to on my own.”
I remember the moment I knew I was supposed to marry my husband...it was a knowing. I remember the moment I knew I was carrying my first child...it was a knowing. And when I read Beuchners words, the phrase White Page settled in a place in me that was all its own...it was a knowing. I was supposed to write a song called White Page and I was terrified.
I continued to soak in the goodness of this book and finished it long before I ever revisited the seemingly daunting concept of writing a song called White Page. But every so often the creative winds would stir in stories that met me along the way and quotes happenstance offered. I remember the day I ran into a possible crumb along the songwriting trail and boy was it golden.
"I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world."
- Mother Teresa
- Mother Teresa
This quote gave the song a definitive direction and as I continued to pray for understanding more and more crumbs began to surface. I was reminded of Donald Miller's A Thousand Miles in a Million Years. It was the book responsible for the hard prayer we began to pray...the prayer to live a better story than the life we had become so complacent and comfortable in. Shortly thereafter, the music and lyric of the chorus came.
Oh We're just a White Page
Oh the Story of Our Days
Is Like a White Page
I don't pretend to fully understand the mystery of songwriting. Sometimes the work feels like a 500 piece puzzle, intricate and tedious. Other times the words fall onto the page as if by some holy act. What I do know is this: I believe every new song is a birth of its own, whether by quick labor or a long tiresome journey. It is a seed planted that grows and grows until it's entrance into the world has finally arrived to begin a life of its own.
I held onto this chorus for a month or two until my song writing deadline dictated we have a 'come to Jesus' meeting. As I sat down to write I realized the white page is our life and our life is our story. The rest of the song flowed onto the page from there as if it had been waiting on the surface of time. In so many cases I write from a place of experience but this was an exception. This song was teaching me, this song was challenging me to live bravely in light of eternity. Then the practical questions came flooding in.
Are my priorities ever questioned? Is there a place for God's kingdom in my mental daily checklist? Do I leave space in my life for God, the ultimate Author, to write the story He wants to write? What in my life carries eternal value? Here again, the theme of eternity seemed to rush in covering every unaffected place in my heart.
I wanted to be intimidated by the charge of this song. I wanted to pretend it was too great a task for me to accept until this scripture came to mind.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Ephesians 2:10
In that moment I felt as if the burden had been made light. Maybe all we have to do is pray for and walk in the good works God has already planned for us to do. It's His story to write, right? So this became my prayer. Nothing more, nothing less. God, what are the good works You prepared beforehand for me to do?
Oddly enough I felt freedom when I prayed this prayer, comforted when remembering that God writes the stories...stories He had in mind before we ever took our first breath.
I thought about people in my life who were living redemptive stories...of a new mom who night after night was faithful to her 2 and 4 and 6 a.m. feedings, of a family trusting God through extended job loss, of a couple heeding the call to adopt a special needs child from across the world.
These stories were beautiful and compelling. There was a quality of otherness to them. They seemed impossible to achieve within human limitations and so pointed to God's authoring. He was bringing glory to Himself in these stories. The characters weren't seeking to control their future, they were simply trusting God with each white page even in the face of uncertainty, fear and risk. The focus of these stories was not immediate contentment but on stewardship of life and on the importance of eternal legacy.
“In hope, in faith, in suffering we are the truth this world will read/Love strikes the page we're reckless marks/we're lines that write redemption's song,”
These stories had taken their place in the passage of time leaving traces of eternity along the way as they walked in the good works God had planned for them to do beforehand. What an inspiring thought. We pray, God writes. If we believe that He hears, we must also believe He will answer and lead.
Most of us may never have the opportunity to be a missionary overseas or share the gospel with tens of thousands. We may never have the resources to build homeless shelters or care for the disenfranchised masses...but we can love each other. We can serve the world with our gifts. We can bravely trust God with our own white page until “the lines that keep/once we've fallen asleep/are etched in eternity.”
We are “simply letting an empty place open up... and waiting for something to fill it.” -Beuchner May we pray, may we love, may we trust and may we live with eternity in mind.
tg
