Aline Barros - Santidade Lyrics

Video

Santidade - CD Som de Adoradores - Aline Barros

Meaning & Inspiration

I’m sitting here, and my clothes still feel heavy with the dust of the road I just came back from. You know that feeling? When you’ve been living in the pig pen so long you start to think the stench is just who you are. Then you hear Aline Barros singing these words, and it hits different when you’re not sitting in a cushioned pew, but kneeling in the dirt.

"Se meu corpo errar o caminho, meu coração clamará por Ti." (If my body misses the way, my heart will cry out for You.)

That line gets me. It doesn’t talk about how my spirit is perfect or how I’ve got it all figured out. It’s honest about the fact that my body—this fragile, twitchy, rebellious thing—is the part that wanders off. My feet want to walk toward the neon lights, and my hands want to grab at things that don't satisfy. But even when I’m halfway to nowhere, there’s this tether connected to my chest. It’s the "heart" that doesn’t know how to stop shouting for the Father, even when my legs have run as far as they can go. It reminds me of Romans 7—that war between what I want to do and what I actually end up doing. It’s miserable, really. But there’s a mercy that catches you mid-stumble.

Aline sings about wanting to "vestir as roupas da santidade" (wear the clothes of holiness). I look at my own hands, and they’re still stained from where I’ve been. I don't feel holy. I feel like a man in rags trying to put on a royal robe he didn't earn. But maybe that’s the point. The Father didn't tell the prodigal to go take a bath and buy a new suit before coming home; He threw the robe over the filthy, unwashed shoulders of his son.

It’s scandalous.

I’m still shivering from the cold of the life I just left. I don't have a clean theology to offer right now. I just have this desperate "sede de Deus" (thirst for God) that she talks about. It’s not the neat, Sunday-morning version. It’s the thirst of a man who realized the water he was drinking was poison.

I’m listening to this and I realize I’m still scared. I’m scared I’ll wander again. I’m scared the "smoke" won’t wash off. But when she sings about wanting to "mergulhar no Santo dos santos" (dive into the Holy of Holies), I think about the curtain being torn in two. It wasn't ripped so the perfect could walk in; it was ripped so the broken, the dirty, and the wandering could stumble into the presence of the One who was waiting with arms open wide.

I’m here. That’s all I’ve got. I’m just trying to learn how to exist in this mercy, even when I still feel like I don't deserve the air I'm breathing.