The following lyrics (italicized) from Tenth Avenue North’s “Healing Begins” offer a light to help turn back the darkness of the soul.
So let it fall down
There’s freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground
What are the walls you’ve built which limit your freedom? What is the self-imposed obstruction, the dense buffer between your heart and peace?
For me, it’s the need to lead people to believe that I live a regret-free life. In reality, I have many regrets. I have walked a dirt path marked by regrets. But worse, I am one who daily recounts, relives, and returns to them.
So I build walls. Some walls are designed to hide the fact that I’m self-centered. Some exist to hide secret sins– lust, red-hot envy, bitterness, and anger. Still, there are those which serve to conceal my failures as a husband, a father, and a steward.
Even the last paragraph and the way it’s worded is a capable facade. It’s easier to list shortcomings in generalities because everyone deals with them. However, there is a specificity to these daily struggles, ones where new mercies are daily required before my feet even hit the floor beneath the night stand. So the lyricist corroborates:
So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do
So we think that you’re good
And you can’t believe it’s not enough
All the walls you built up
Are just glass on the outside
There’s a warring opposition, outward but mostly inward. The devil desires to play his sifting melody, but more often than not, settles for a 2nd-chair-blasting horn of daily introspection. More often than not, his predatory role is hyena, perfectly content to devour what the brooding lion has slaughtered.
I sin. Worse than anyone can imagine. Mostly in heart if not deed. So shine the light in the basement, let the walls come down. The lyricist is relentless:
This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark
I’m tired of being the hireling of regret, working overtime for slow death pay. The lyricist consoles:
Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the dark inside of us
So please don’t fight
This coming light
Let this blood come cover us
His blood can cover us
Bring on Psalm 51:17! Let it sink in, for I have built walls, but not altars. You won’t require I fall on the sword, yet by the Sword I must die. Tonight the Lyricist reminds:
This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark
Grace Breaks 