Monday evening as I drove my daughter to the local shopping mall, I turned my Ipod to a Bruce Cockburn album that I had downloaded several weeks ago as I prepared to go on a business trip. I think I had loaded several days worth of music. The idea was to update my playlist and begin to listen to some songs and albums that have been collecting dust. A friend of mine, Steve Griffith, told me that he works through his collection of CD’s every year in somewhat of an alphabetical order.

I tend to listen to music in streaks or phases. Their was the Joni Mitchell phase and the Bob Dylan phase and the Miles Davis phase. On the other side, there has been and continues to be the contemporary Christian phase. People like Margaret Becker, Rich Mullins, and Shawn McDonald come readily to mind. Surrounding all of this is Vineyard Worship stuff and new songs from the Integrity Music stream and Morningstar Worship.

Music in my life seems to come when I need it. There have been times when I listen to a certain song and it seems to describe where I am better than I can myself.

So it was with Bruce Cockburn.

Now when I listen to some of these songs from several years ago, the memories and emotions associated with those times are still rumbling around somehwere in my data banks. The song I transcribed by Cockburn the other day fell on one side of the emotional scale—the melancholy side—the slightly jaundiced side. In other words, though poetic, it was a little dark.

Another day passes and I flip on the old Ipod and begin to listen to another oldie goldie from an artist named Beth Nielson Chapman. The album is entitled Sand and Water and was recorded shortly after her husband died from cancer.

Her voice is angelic and if you haven’t heard of her she is real find. The song that touched me that day is one called The Color Of The Roses. I think it describes some of the feelings that she dealt with surrounding the loss of her husband. Unlike the Cockburn song, it is positive and upbeat, while dealing with a challenging subject.

I held you close to me
Once in a distant dream
Far from the shores of my fear
I sailed on this ocean
Where all I imagined could happen
And now you are here
It’s so hard to touch what is out of our hands
To know and to trust what the heart understands

Life gives us magic
And life brings us tragedy
Everyone suffers some loss
Still we have faith in it
Childlike hope
There’s a reason that outweighs the cost
And gravity throws all these rules in our way
And sometimes the spirit refuses to play

Chorus

Oh Love
Turn me around in your arms
And in this dream we share
Let us not miss one kiss
And add my regrets to the tears in the rain
That’s what the color of roses contain

Chorus

The part that I honed in on was the:

Only the ones who believe
Ever see what they dream
Ever dream what comes true

I don’t know whether or not Chapman is a Christian. But it seems like she is speaking to a lot of us who are currently working on the dreams that we have held onto lo these many years. Through thick and thin—through church splits and friendships that have faded.

We are told in scripture that as a man thinks in his heart, so he is. And that if we say to that mountain, be removed and cast into the sea, and believe, it will be. That if two of us agree on anything touching, it will be done for us. To seek and find; ask and it will be given. And many more verses just like these that have influenced us over the years.

I guess what I am saying is that in this process of self-discovery, it is time to bring some of the dreams that we have held onto and not seen fullfilled, back onto the front burner and see what happens to them—what God will accomplish with them and us.

And remember it is the little things that often matter most—a kind word and a helpful hand—are often more powerful than an army full of tanks and weapons.