Seek

[grid blog :: advent 1]
This post is part of an Advent grid blog in which several Christian bloggers are participating. (Bob at The Corner will be aggregating them; you can also see an image for the theme there.) During the 4 weeks of this grid blog, I'm going to be looking at U2 songs evoking four Advent themes; the theme for Advent 1 is SEEK.

The obvious candidate for "SEEK" is "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," which is precisely why I'm not using it. Instead, I want to turn the image inside out and think about God's search for us. After all, those who traveled to seek the newborn Word could only do so because his own quest had brought him into the flesh first. So the song of the day is "Drowning Man." Put these words on God's lips in Advent and see what they reveal:

I'll cross the sky for your love
Give you what I hold dear

God who hung the skies crosses them, lovesick for his lost people. Christ, his own Self, the dearest gift, is surrendered into the fragile arms of a peasant woman.

Chorus and verse, over and over, the same message: the One we are seeking has already come out in search of us, and is only waiting for us to accept the offer. "Take my hand...hold on tightly," God calls repeatedly; "if you can," he promises to "be there" with a "love [that] lasts forever."