HE'S ALREADY THERE
Tues. Feb. 3rd, 2015
On Darin and Brooke Aldridge's 2011 compact disc,
So Much In Between, there is a song
called "He's Already There" with words and music by Bernie Nelson and
Karyn Williams.
(Nice picture by Ed Rode
at
http://www.songlyrics.com/darin-aldridge-brooke-aldridge/he-s-already-there-lyrics/
.)
It's a beautiful song and the
Aldridges give a fantastic performance of it.
The lyrics are interesting, too -- way too interesting not to comment
on.
It's a song about God, but God is
never named.
God is the "He"
of the song.
And what a strange
beginning for a Christian song!
There's never been a day that I went
hungry,
Never had a night that I had no place to
sleep.
Never had a prayer that went unanswered . . .
Most Christians -- I dare say -- cannot make those claims. Can I say I never had a prayer that went
unanswered? Paradox comin', here it is:
only if I count my prayers which God said No to as "answered prayers."
The first stanza continues:
I'm right here living in the moment,
To tell the truth, I just don't really
care,
Paradox squared -- this song is going to turn out to be
about a Christian. But can you be a
Christian, if you don't really care?
Stanza concludes:
All that much about tomorrow, because I
know: he's already there.
The songwriter doesn't care all that much about tomorrow,
knowing God is already there.
Now I love etymology, so we're going to embark on a lengthy excursus
on etymology here -- the etymology of "care." My regular English dictionary says care is
from the Old English noun cearu (a care) and the Old English verb carian (to
care). But for more detail, there's a great website of the English language as
it was a thousand years ago, the Bosworth-Toller
Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Here' what
it says about the verb:
(2) carian at
http://www.bosworthtoller.com/041395
(from the Supplement to the dictionary) -- (a) "to sorrow, be troubled,"
(b) "to care for, see to the welfare of, be solicitous about", (c) "to
take care, pains, thought," (d) "to care about, be interested in;
with negative, to be indifferent to."
Well -- hmm -- let's translate a little from the right Modern
English of Mr. Bosworth (1788-1876) and Mr. Toller (1844–1930) to my own tolerably
Modern English (1951-present). What of "regard,
heed"? Easy -- they mean "pay
attention to." What of "be anxious,
be troubled"? For this angle of
carian's meaning, I'd like to suggest for a modern equivalent "to
worry." There you go: "to take
care, pay attention to, worry, see to the welfare of, care about, be interested
in, or with negative, be indifferent to."
Most of the modern meanings -- plus worry. The translation "to worry" makes
sense for some of the examples Bosworth and Toller give (Se morgenlica dæg caraþ
ymb hyne sylfne, (very roughly) => Tomorrow morning's day will worry about
itself).
AND -- "worry" makes sense of Nelson and Williams'
paradox. If "I just don't really
care all that much about tomorrow" means -- in drabber, less poetic
language -- "I just don't really worry all that much about tomorrow"
-- NOW we're standing where Christians are supposed to be standing!
So we tracked the paradox to its lair, we grabbed it and
shook it up a little, made it less lyrical, more prosaic -- and it turns out
we've got a Biblical meaning here that Christians can be happy to mean.
Anything else noteworthy in these lyrics? The title phrase -- the conclusion of the
stanza -- He's already there. We are
linear creatures, but God's eternity is nonlinear. We can't visit tomorrow today. God inhabits yesterday, today, and tomorrow
all at the same time. When we get to a
day on the calendar, God is already there.
There's an overlap in meaning here with Casting Crowns' song
"Already There" -- different song, related concept -- I don't know
which came first. But the Aldridges hit
a home run with Nelson and Williams' song -- check it out.
Links:
