Behold the Sea

Once you were tethered
Well now you are free
That was the river
This is the sea!

Irish songwriter/musician Mike Scott penned these lyrics for a song recorded in 1985. He uses the river-the sea as metaphorical comparison between a former life of bondage and a new life of freedom.

These things you keep
You’d better throw them away
You wanna turn your back
On your soulless days
Once you were tethered
And now you are free
Once you were tethered
Well now you are free
That was the river
This is the sea!

Now if you’re feelin’ weary
If you’ve been alone too long
Maybe you’ve been suffering from
A few too many
Plans that have gone wrong
And you’re trying to remember
How fine your life used to be
Running around banging your drum
Like it’s 1973
Well that was the river
This is the sea

Now you say you’ve got trouble
You say you’ve got pain
You say’ve got nothing left to believe in
Nothing to hold on to
Nothing to trust
Nothing but chains
You’re scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
Scouring your conscience
Raking through your memories
But that was the river
This is the sea

Now i can see you wavering
As you try to decide
You’ve got a war in your head
And it’s tearing you up inside
You’re trying to make sense
Of something that you just can’t see
Trying to make sense now
And you know you once held the key
But that was the river
And this is the sea

Now I hear there’s a train
It’s coming on down the line
It’s yours if you hurry
You’ve got still enough time
And you don’t need no ticket
And you don’t pay no fee
No you don’t need no ticket
You don’t pay no fee
Because that was the river
And this is the sea

That was the river
This is the sea

Behold the sea

Is the song conveying a Christian message? While it does not specifically mention the method with which to reach the sea from the river, the final verse provides the necessary clue. This verse is surely a reference to Curtis Mayfield’s song “People Get Ready”:

People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’
You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’
Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

People get ready for the train to Jordan
It’s picking up passengers from coast to coast
Faith is the key, open the doors and board ’em
There’s hope for all among those loved the most.

There ain’t no room for the hopeless sinner
Who would hurt all mankind just to save his own
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
For there’s no hiding place against the Kingdom’s throne

So people get ready, there’s a train a-comin’
You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’
Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

 

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Psalm 40, U2, War and Scripture References

I bought U2’s album War just after its initial release in 1983. The record quickly became one of my new favorites.

Years later, as I grew to collect more Jazz and Classical music, War—like many other Rock-oriented records—was essentially cast aside and listened to only occasionally.

Upon my Christian conversion in 2000, I began culling my record collection. Much of the Rock records were sold off (or even thrown away). But I kept War.

Years later, I pulled the record for a re-listen. Some of the lyrics were seen in a new light. This began when I realized that the final song of the record, “40”, was quite obviously sourcing Psalm 40. See this video here:

After discovering this, I began to listen to and read the other song lyrics anew. One that caught me right away was the following from “Drowning Man”:

Rise up, rise up with wings
Like eagles you’ll run, you’ll run
And not grow weary

I immediately recognized this as a paraphrase of Isaiah 40:31. I then realized that the entire song was loosely based on Scripture. Another rather obvious point of contact is found in these lyrics:

The storms will pass
It won’t be long now
The storms will pass
But my love lasts forever

Bono sings it from God’s perspective: Take my hand; you know I’ll be there, if you can. I’ll cross the sky for your love. I was delighted to find another vlogger who sees this as I do:

And here I originally thought this was a love song from a man to a woman!

Another point of contact finds itself in “Surrender”: If I want to live, I’ve got to die to myself. And the song “Red Light” can be read from a Christian perspective quite easily.

This all surely comes from Bono’s and other band members’ Irish Catholic upbringing.¹

After my conversion I’ve found a number of songs with an underlying Christian message. And I’ve found others that probably were not originally intended to be understood in a Christian context, yet I’ve adapted them that way nonetheless. I now have a different worldview and see things from a different perspective than I previously had. I thank God for that.

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¹ And, yes, I’m well aware of Bono’s subsequent (to this record’s release) questionable associations with globalists, etc. and his questionable beliefs, but they are beyond the scope of this post. It would be anachronistic to impose later views upon this 1983 release.