Published April 2nd, 2007 by hrabbach
Ginny Owens – This Road
It’s been a while since I found the time to sit down and share my thoughts about a song with you and I’m sorry about that, but life just got in the way. Anyway, yesterday something reminded me of a song that seems like a good match for this week leading up to Easter, as we remember the suffering of Christ in the days before He gave His life for us on the cross.
Ginny Owens’s “This Road” is a song that first and foremost reminds me of a very lonely time. Back in 2003, when I was living in London, part of a team where I was the only male single under 50 (and I was under 30 back then), I often felt “a million miles away from anything familiar”, so that opening line of the song touched me very deeply. The first verse quite accurately sums up my feelings of loneliness and the question in the chorus, although I knew the answer in a way, was my question at times as well – “Why this road, why this way and this load?”. And as I was still thinking this is the perfect song to nurture my self-pity, the second verse hit me right where it hurts. Ginny Owens so perfectly puts all that into perspective as she forces our eyes away from ourselves and to Christ and His suffering – and the loneliness that He felt. Wheneever I hear this song, it reminds me that whatever I go through, whatever I experience, be it good or bad, He already knows and He has done it before me.
No, my loneliness didn’t go away when I listened to this song. But still it made me feel better because it reminded me that I’m not the only one who experiences loneliness. And it reminded me that I have a God and Savior who know exactly what loneliness is like. Not a distant being, but a God who came down to this earth to live as a human being, capable of all human emotion and willing to go through everything that I could ever imagine. What is a little loneliness compared to that? And yet I know it matters to Him, as it did back then. “I don’t have to understand to believe that You know why…” – that helped me then and it still helps me now when I face situations I find hard to understand. So far, looking back at the situations I didn’t understand in the past, they all make sense now. And I know that I can simply trust Him to know why in the future as well… because who knows when He will send me onto the next road “a thousand miles away from anything familiar”…
Song: This Road
Artist: Ginny Owens
Album: Something More
