The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.
- Zephaniah 3:17 ESV
I couldn’t be more thrilled to write about this verse today! It’s the verse my new song I Don’t Want To Miss It is anchored in, and it floors me. Do y’all ever feel distracted, disheartened, discouraged, or just down on yourself? Oh good... I’m not alone. Throughout a year or two of counseling, I’ve spent time visiting some of the deepest wounds in my story. I’ve acknowledged them before of course, but I’m a 7 on the Enneagram, and I hate pain, so I’ve never actually spent much time there in the pits of my deepest pain. But as I’ve simply allowed myself to go back to those places and breathe and grieve and weep, I’ve encountered the breath and life and love and tenderness and empathy of God. It’s not an easy commitment to hike down into the valley of our deepest wounds, into the deepest part of the canyons of pain that life can carve out of us, and sometimes it feels like that journey might kill us, but there in the valley I encountered Love. In those places where I felt the most out of control, the most sad, the most angry, the most hurt… I found that I was held and sung over, like I hold and sing over my kids.
He will quiet us by His love if we’ll only let Him. He’s singing over us on our saddest days AND He’s singing over us when we are on our A-game and crushing life. He’s singing over us when we’re lost AND when we are found. He’s singing over us when we are missing the mark and when we are hitting every target. He’s singing over us when we feel that we look our best and when we know that we’re at our worst. My hope with I Don’t Want to Miss it, is that it will turn up the volume of the song of LOVE God sings over every beating human heart! I don’t want to miss any of His beauty or any of His love. He comes to give us life to the full (John 10:10), and as I get older and experience more sorrow, as my eyes have been opened to more of the pain that others on this earth experience and to the pain I have carried in my own story, I’m seeing a clearer picture, that we have the opportunity to experience the FULLNESS of God’s love, presence, peace, and power in the FULL spectrum of life... from the tops of the mountains to the depths of the valleys, from our deepest sorrows to our brightest joys, God is there… singing over us, the whole time. You are held. You are loved. He rejoices over you, you specifically... with singing. He made you on purpose and for a purpose. He loves you, and He’s with you always. Grateful for this good news today, and I hope that I Don’t Want To Miss It reminds you of the goodness and makes you want to dance and laugh with deep relief that we are, in fact, the object of God’s affection.
