Waterdeep

Don and Lori Schafer have been making music for years together under various band names and in conjunction with other artists. They comprise part of the worship musicians who have brought forth the many "Enter the Worship Circle" albums in the last fifteen years.

I thoroughly appreciate their work and have benefited from it tremendously, and I think their work is especially admirable given the rising popularity of Christian worship music in the last two decades. Don and Lori have managed to maintain a devotion to God first, and their music has continued to stretch itself in an attempt to expand their own faith. I think - if you read the bio for one of Don and Lori's bands (Waterdeep), you will see the maturity and care that goes into their music and - consequently - their message.

So, clearly, I enjoy their stuff. Well, today, I listened to a song of Waterdeep's that came out several years ago. As can often happen, I had heard the song several times, but the lyrics final caught my ear and the message entered my soul.

The song is titled "Take Me", and it is the story of how we learn to let go of our "earthly tents" in the process of aging so that our souls might be released and our bodies restored. Here are the lyrics to that song:


“Old ain’t a word that I’m fond of,” he said.
“And these days I’ve begun to lose count.”
Mumbling she rolls in her wheelchair, and says,
“I’m afraid that they’ve closed my account.”

There’s a blur that occurs in the line of their life
That decays the whole notion of sense
And they call to the past, insisting that it last,
While they’re climbing down reality’s fence

Singing with me
Take me
Take me
Write my name in the most Holy Tome
And when it’s my time
To assume the sublime,
Take me to my promised home

And their hands aren’t gnarled, they’re in love with the earth
And they’re dying to go there again
We say the essence of life is strong in our youth,
Slowly buried under wrinkles of skin

But there’s God in the way that life comes to an end,
In the way that it draws to a close,
In the saying of soul to the house of the skin,
You’re too weak now to really oppose