Prayers echoing in my soul

November 20, 2010

 

I woke up this morning with a song going in my head from the Broadway musical, Les Miserables.  Since this is one of my family’s favorite musicals, Carol and I have seen it a few times, including once with the kids.  In addition, we have the soundtrack and have listened to it many times – thus, some songs are memorized by now in my mind.

 

This song, “Bring Him Home” is sung by the main character, Valjean, as a prayer over Marius who has been wounded during the battle at the barricade.  It is a beautiful fatherly prayer to God to save this “son” that Valjean never had though he is the young man that his adopted daughter deeply loves.

Valjean’s fatherly prayer goes like this:

God on high
Hear my prayer
In my need
You have always been there

He is young
He's afraid
Let him rest
Heaven blessed.
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home.

He's like the son I might have known
If God had granted me a son.
The summers die
One by one
How soon they fly
On and on
And I am old
And will be gone.

Bring him peace
Bring him joy
He is young
He is only a boy

You can take
You can give
Let him be
Let him live
If I die, let me die
Let him live
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home.

Those words – “you can take; you can give; let him be; let him live” – continue to echo in my soul.  They express the deep longing that continues to reverberate in my heart ever since I said similar desperate words of prayer over Daniel as he lay dying in that Missoula hospital. 

Desperate words echoing still in my heart and soul . . .