You’ve probably heard the song “Great Are You Lord” and are familiar with the lyrics. Some of those lyrics include….

 “Great are you, Lord!

You give life to every heart that is broken

It’s ur breath in our lungs so we pour out our praise to you only…

All the earth will shout your praise

Our hearts will cry

These bones will sing

Great are you Lord!…”

So about that song…It came on the radio on my way in to the office this morning. I had planned on posting a different blog but this struck me so deeply so I wanted to share with you.  

This song was played and sung by all the grandchildren at my Mom’s funeral so it’s been very hard for me to hear this song since then. And as you know if you listen to Christian radio, it plays ALL. THE. TIME. Many of us sing it in our worship at church.  And when I hear it, grieving begins for me. Today I felt led to just blare it and sing it to the top of my lungs fighting through the pain of missing my mom in disbelief that she has been gone now for just over six months. Really?! Not possible. Not right. Not something I’m fond of to say the least. As I belted those words out in my car just a little while ago and tears flowed freely, it was like a cleansing came about and a faith rose up in my heart. I realized that if I would just change the way I look at this song it could actually be a gift from Mom to me instead of a memory of one of the toughest days of my life. As I sang, I saw in my mind’s eye my beautiful mom singing it with all she had left in her with real faith and heaps of hope. Instead of it making me mad not understanding why this and why that, I caught a glimpse of the fact that Mom knew something that I’m still learning. She said this right up to her last breath. She looked at me with those precious hazel eyes 

that I inherited and said, “No matter what happens, I believe I am healed.” She would say over and over, “My God is faithful. It’s His breath in my lungs.” She went down fighting. She was a true faith hero. She had obstacles that were insurmountable but she never gave up. 

She had lung cancer that had metasticized all throughout her bones so that song spoke life to her ailing body. She is healed and whole today in the presence of the love of her life ~ her Father God whom she loved and worshipped so fervently. 

This morning when I sang along to the radio in my car, it was a declaration of faith like Abraham…against hope, he believed in hope in Genesis 17:4-5. I decided this morning that every time I hear that song it will do for me what it did for my mom. It will instill hope and faith in me for what I am now facing. I will not allow it to cause me to go backward in asking “Why?” Or “Why not?” My mom would hate for that song to torment us. It was an anthem of faith. That’s what she intended it to be so how dare me turn it into a source of pain. 

I wonder how many things in our lives we do this with. What person or thought or item causes you pain at the mention of it? What if instead of allowing that to be the case we commit today to let it become the very thing that causes faith to rise up in our hearts and declare to ourselves and to the enemy and to the world, “We win! And it starts right now!” 

Great are you, Lord! I pray everyone who reads this will sing and hum that song all day as a faith anthem over your situation.  

Happy Monday!  

In honor of today, my parents’ 46th Wedding Anniversary