God Sings Over You Like a Song

(from Zephaniah 3:14-20)

Do you know what it feels like
to wait in a very quiet room,
hoping someone will be glad you came in?

For a long time, God's people had been afraid.
The prophet's words had been heavy ones,
warnings like dark clouds piling up.
The people walked with their heads down.
They wondered if God was angry.
They wondered if he was tired of them.
They wondered if, maybe, he wished they were someone else.

And then the clouds part,
and a new kind of voice comes through.
It is not a warning this time.
It is a song.

"Sing!" it says.
"Sing, my people, sing out loud!
Be glad with your whole heart!
The thing you were afraid of is gone.
I have carried it away.
I am right here in the middle of you,
and I am not going anywhere."

That is God talking,
close as the breath on your cheek.

He says, "Do not let your hands go limp.
Do not be afraid anymore."

And then the song turns tender.

The God who made the mountains,
the God the stars obey,
looks at his small, tired, head-down people,
and he is so happy about them
that he begins to sing.

He sings over them
the way a daddy hums over a sleepy child,
the way you hum when you are holding
something you love and never want to put down.

God himself, singing, over you.
He sings because you are his,
and he has wanted you home
for a very, very long time.

"I will gather you," he promises.
"The ones who limp, I will bring close.
The ones who got lost, I will carry.
The ones who felt forgotten,
I will turn their shame into honor.
I will not come home with anyone missing."

Long before, a shepherd boy named David
had sung that the Lord was his shepherd.
Now the Shepherd himself was singing back,
promising to carry every lamb
too tired to walk another step.

This was a promise,
sung long before the One it pointed to had come.

For one day Jesus would walk in,
the Bridegroom,
the one who goes out looking
for every single person he loves,
and will not stop until they are gathered in.

And when he finds them,
when the whole family is finally home,
there is singing.
His own singing, over them, over you.

It is a song with no last note.
Soon his people would be carried far away,
to a strange land beside a strange river.
Even there, the song would find them.
Even there, he would not let them go.