This is what it means to be held

The song “Held” sung by Natalie Grant is a powerful song of God’s love holding us and sustaining us through unspeakable pain. The lyrics were written by a woman who tells the story in the first verse of two of her friends. One was a woman who’s husband died within two months of being diagnosed with cancer. The second friend had finally had a baby after praying and trying for several years. The baby was healthy and growing and died in his sleep at only eight months.

I don’t know how big your pain is, but I do know God is bigger. I know that He is big enough to take every bit of the pain and anger you can throw at Him and love you through it all. God never promises that we’ll be saved from the nightmares of this life but He does promise that when everything falls He’ll be there to hold you.

He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.
(NIV Is 40:11)

Sometimes words only get in the way of loving God or letting Him love us. Job’s friends sat with him in silence for seven days. With no words they showed him their love by holding him up spiritually during that time.

If you’re in pain right now spend some quiet time just letting Jesus hold you in those powerful arms that took the nails for you.

Lyrics:

Two months is too little
They let him go
They had no sudden healing
To think that providence
Would take a child from his mother
While she prays, is appalling
Who told us we’d be rescued
What has changed and
Why should we be saved from nightmares
Were asking why this happens to us
Who have died to live, it’s unfair

Chorus:
This is what it means to be held
How it feels, when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive
This is what it is to be loved and to know
That the promise was when everything fell
We’d be held

This hand is bitterness
We want to taste it and
Let the hatred numb our sorrows
The wise hand opens slowly
To lilies of the valley and tomorrow

If hope is born of suffering
If this is only the beginning
Can we not wait, for one hour
Watching for our savior

Chorus