400 Years of Silence

I have dozens of unfinished songs. A stanza, guitar rift or chord progression often rattle around in my head for months or years before settling into an arrangement. Starting a song is easy. Finishing one is often harder.

There are times when I feel like all the unfinished music in my head keeps me alive. I decide “well I guess I won’t quit on life today . . . I’ve got too much to do.” But then there are times it bugs me. I look at the loose ends as accusations. “You’ll never finish,” they say.

So at the end of 2008, when I was asked a week before Christmas to play in the candle light service at Redeemer the next Sunday, I said yes and gave the title of a song I had not finished writing: “400 Years of Silence”. In fact, I had barely begun writing it!

Back in 2002, I spent Christmas in Ohio with my wife’s family. While I was there, I started thinking about the nearly 400 years of nobody talking between the last Old Testament prophet and Jesus. I wrote this:

400 years of silence
till shepherds feared the light
and heard the voice of angels tell
of crying in the night
where Mary wrapped you gently
and laid your body down, down, down,
down where the curse is found.¹

It was the beginnings of a Christmas song. It came with music. But for four years it just sat there in my journal. Then in Christmas of 2006, I tried to finish. I wrote verses, a chorus, a bridge . . . and they all sucked. This was the only salvagable portion of the entire effort:

O ground once cursed
break forth in spring
O muffled earth
rise up and sing
You broken race
wake to the sound
far as the curse is
far as the curse is
far as the curse is found

Now it was 2008, and I was supposed to play it in less than a week on Sunday night. By Thursday – when the bulletin was supposed to be printed – I was praying to be inspired. I wasn’t, so I filed for an extension. Because a different bulletin would be used for the candle light service, I had till Sunday morning.

Early Sunday morning it hit me. I saw Mary, mother of Jesus, at the birth and death of Christ, and Mary Magdalene in between. Frustration and self-accusation turned to gratitude and worship. The song was complete.

400 Years of Silence

From Eden’s doors how far we’ve flown; tribes of strangers all alone –
from darkness we are fleeing, to darkness we are bound
far as the curse is found.
From ages past your words were stars shining on our darkened hearts
and then to sign the morning, you spoke one final sound

400 years of silence till shepherds feared the light
and heard the voice of angels tell of crying in the night
where Mary wrapped you gently and laid your body down, down, down,
down where the curse is found

Our souls are like a neighborhood – stones mark where our accusers stood
but you are still there speaking, “Who stands against you now?”

400 years of silence and now we finally speak
with oil, perfume, our tears, our hair we tremble at your feet
as Mary washed you gently and laid her offering down, down, down
down where the curse is found.

We feared your stone would crush our souls so struck the Rock and water flowed
then flowering our desert sweet mercy rivered down, down, down,
down where the cures is found

400 years of silence then on the mountain height
the finished word you spoke rang out so beautiful and bright
then Mary wrapped you gently and laid your body down, down, down,
down where the curse is found.

O ground once cursed break forth in spring
O muffled earth rise up and sing
You broken race, wake to the sound
far as the curse is found.

1. This phrase is taken from Issac Watts Christmas hymn “Joy to the World”. I wanted to use imagery from that hymn throughout “400 Years of Silence” [↩]

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Filed in Songs | About This Entry

Dec 21st, 2008 | By Justin Brock | Category: Songs