Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!

I wanted to share this song I've been obsessed with for a few months now, but before I do, let me try to explain a few pieces of background information. Maybe these will help everyone understand why it's so moving to me—and maybe you'll even be able to share in my appreciation.

Background Info #1

The Christian hope is the day when Jesus physically returns to earth and calls with a loud voice and all the people in their graves climb out. Bodies are reconstructed. Hearts and brains and bones and ligaments and tissues and hair and fingernails are all put back in place. Cancer and heart disease and gun violence and old age have nothing on resurrection.

I imagine Jesus crying, "Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" and people actually waking up. The dead are raised, and the world is put back the way it's supposed to be. And we live forever and ever in the presence of Jesus (the God-man), God His Father, and the Holy Spirit on a refashioned earth. Our goal is not that we go to heaven—our goal is that heaven comes to earth.

Wake up!

Background Info #2

Besides waking us up o resurrection when He returns, Jesus also wakes us up in a certain sense beginning now. Although we may have spent much of our lives asleep to the things of God, He can open our eyes and awaken us to hope. He can awaken us to faith. He can transform what we believe and how we conceive of the world. In other words, He can make us Christians.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is in the book of Ephesians, where the author Paul compares the way we live as Christians to the way we lived before coming to know Jesus by using the imagery of light and darkness. Light exposes things that darkness tries to hide, and we are now children of the light. We used to be darkness, but now we are light in Jesus. The best verse is the invitation: "Wake up, o sleeper! And rise from the dead! And Christ will shine on you!"

It's this verse that makes me imagine Christ shouting, "Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!" and hearts and minds and lives being transformed. I imagine people who have spent their lives ignorant of His goodness being awakened all around—because this is precisely what God wants to do. It's why Jesus came to die, and it's the only way that people waking up at the end of time becomes a good thing (see above). We'll only be happy when we wake up physically in the future if we've woken up spiritually now.

Thank God this is precisely what Jesus is crying to the lost all around us through the Holy Spirit and the church. Wake up!

Background Info #3

On top of these Scriptural themes, I also think back to one of my favorite chapters in The Lord of the Rings. It's called "The Houses of Healing," and in it, the soon-to-be victorious King Aragorn visits some desperately sick friends in the hospital. They have been wounded in battle, and without a miracle they will soon perish.

There has been an old prophecy that "the hands of the king are the hands of a healer," and Aragorn finally fulfills this. One by one, he goes to the bedsides of his comatose friends and wakes them up.

Here's how the waking up of the first and most urgent healing happens:

ow Aragorn knelt beside Faramir, and held a hand upon his brow. And those that watched felt that some great struggle was going on. For Aragorn’s face grew grey with weariness; and ever and anon he called the name of Faramir, but each time more faintly to their hearing, as if Aragorn himself was removed from them, and walked afar in some dark vale, calling for one that was lost.

And at last Bergil came running in, and he bore six leaves in a cloth. ‘It is kingsfoil, Sir,’ he said; ‘but not fresh, I fear. It must have been culled two weeks ago at the least. I hope it will serve, Sir?’ Then looking at Faramir he burst into tears.

But Aragorn smiled. ‘It will serve,’ he said. ‘The worst is now over. Stay and be comforted!’ Then taking two leaves, he laid them on his hands and breathed on them, and then he crushed them, and straightway a living freshness filled the room, as if the air itself awoke and tingled, sparkling with joy. And then he cast the leaves into the bowls of steaming water that were brought to him, and at once all hearts were lightened. For the fragrance that came to each was like a memory of dewy mornings of unshadowed sun in some land of which the fair world in spring is itself but a fleeting memory. But Aragorn stood up as one refreshed, and his eyes smiled as he held a bowl before Faramir’s dreaming face.

‘Well now! Who would have believed it?’ said Ioreth to a woman that stood beside her. ‘The weed is better than I thought. It reminds me of the roses of Imloth Melui when I was a lass, and no king could ask for better.’

Suddenly Faramir stirred, and he opened his eyes, and he looked on Aragorn who bent over him; and a light of knowledge and love was kindled in his eyes, and he spoke softly. ‘My lord, you called me. I come. What does the king command?’

‘Walk no more in the shadows, but awake!’ said Aragorn. ‘You are weary. Rest a while, and take food, and be ready when I return.’

‘Farewell then for a while!’ said Aragorn. ‘I must go to others who need me.’ And he left the chamber with Gandalf and Imrahil; but Beregond and his son remained behind, unable to contain their joy. As he followed Gandalf and shut the door Pippin heard Ioreth exclaim:

‘King! Did you hear that? What did I say? The hands of a healer, I said.’ And soon the word had gone out from the House that the king was indeed come among them, and after war he brought healing; and the news ran through the City.

‘I will, lord,’ said Faramir. ‘For who would lie idle when the king has returned?’

After saving Faramir, Aragorn saves Éowyn:

Then Aragorn stooped and looked in her face, and it was indeed white as a lily, cold as frost, and hard as graven stone. But he bent and kissed her on the brow, and called her softly, saying: 

‘Éowyn Éomund’s daughter, awake! For your enemy has passed away!’

She did not stir, but now she began again to breathe deeply, so that her breast rose and fell beneath the white linen of the sheet. Once more Aragorn bruised two leaves of athelas and cast them into steaming water; and he laved her brow with it, and her right arm lying cold and nerveless on the coverlet. 

Then, whether Aragorn had indeed some forgotten power of Westernesse, or whether it was but his words of the Lady Éowyn that wrought on them, as the sweet influence of the herb stole about the chamber it seemed to those who stood by that a keen wind blew through the window, and it bore no scent, but was an air wholly fresh and clean and young, as if it had not before been breathed by any living thing and came new-made from snowy mountains high beneath a dome of stars, or from shores of silver far away washed by seas of foam. 

‘Awake, Éowyn, Lady of Rohan!’ said Aragorn again, and he took her right hand in his and felt it warm with life returning. ‘Awake! The shadow is gone and all darkness is washed clean!’ Then he laid her hand in Éomer’s and stepped away. ‘Call her!’ he said, and he passed silently from the chamber. 

‘Éowyn, Éowyn!’ cried Éomer amid his tears. But she opened her eyes and said: ‘Éomer! What joy is this? For they said that you were slain. Nay, but that was only the dark voices in my dream. How long have I been dreaming?’

Finally, Aragorn saves Merry, the hobbit:

Then Aragorn laid his hand on Merry’s head, and passing his hand gently through the brown curls, he touched the eyelids, and called him by name. And when the fragrance of athelas stole through the room, like the scent of orchards, and of heather in the sunshine full of bees, suddenly Merry awoke, and he said:

‘I am hungry. What is the time?’

Finally, the Song

inally, I'm ready to let you listen to the song! My prayer as you listen is that we'd all wake up. 

Click here to see the song on YouTube (for licensing reasons, it wouldn't let me embed it): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoPWqi0W2DA.

f you prefer, you can also see the song in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/wake-up/id505041356?i=505041517.