Second guessing

Not enough has been said here about Sara Groves’s latest album Floodplain, but I have it on rotation in my car and some of the songs are going deeper in.

One song that didn’t initially appeal to me, as the music style doesn’t altogether light my fire, and I am not sure whether it’s not a little incongruous with the lyrics, is Second Guess Girl. I like the lyrics though, and was thinking about them on the way home from church last night. It’s a song about how difficult it can sometimes be to do the right and good thing in trying to love our sisters and brothers.

There are times where what I thought was a loving action went very badly, and if you get that wrong once or twice, well it becomes easier to do nothing, and maybe nothing is the loving course. And sometimes for all our actions or our words, of various kinds, a situation is simply no closer to a resolution or change than it was years ago, so is there wisdom in any more words or actions. And you only have to glance at social media to see that what one Christian considers is the right response to a problem is what another Christian considers the wrong one.

And if you are an intuitive person who can’t not read in and around the words and the actions, it's only harder, because what people say they want or mean is not always what they want or mean. But how can you be sure? And even if you are sure, should you wait till it's said or done? Guessing is fraught.

The song doesn’t actually give an answer to the problem, but to say that sooner or later we’ll know more about it. Maybe that will be this side or heaven, maybe it will the other. In the meantime though it's worth asking the question, and asking for wisdom (James 1:5).

Picture snitched from here.

Second Guess Girl

is it time for a speech or for silence

are you calling for peace of defiance

is this darkening counsel or wisdom

are we all perpetrators or victims?

is this childlike simple rote history

or complex deciphering mystery

is this blessing or ill gotten wealth

am I speaking for God or myself?

it’s a hard world for a second guess girl

with one hand and another

i try to take it in but it leaves me spinning

trying to love my sister and brother

is this confidence born of a calling

is this ego and pride before falling

are we standing to fight for what’s right

are we angry and hopelessly blind?

are we companions of Job or prophets of God

are we not of this world or just painfully odd

is it time for free grace or tough love

or a little of all the above?

it’s a hard world for a second guess girl

with one hand and the other

i try to take it in and it leaves me spinning

trying to love my sister and brother

sooner or later we’ll know more about it

sooner or later we’ll understand why

we’ll understand why

it’s a hard world for a second guess girl

with one hand and another

i try to take it in and it leaves me spinning

trying to love my sister and brother

Sara Groves