Cody Carnes - Til The End Of Time Lyrics

Video

Cody Carnes - Til The End Of Time ft. Kari Jobe (Live)

Meaning & Inspiration

My hands aren't as steady as they once were, and the parchment of my favorite old hymnal has grown thin, almost translucent at the edges. When the house goes quiet at night—the kind of quiet that lets the joints ache—I don't look for songs that promise me the world. I look for ones that might hold me up when my own knees are buckling.

Cody Carnes and Kari Jobe sing about the breakers washing over them. Now, there’s a line that lands heavy in a room where the shadows are long: "Deep calls to deep in the mystery."

When you’re young, that sounds like a poem. When you’ve been through the fire—when you’ve sat by a graveside or watched a diagnosis change the shape of your kitchen table—it sounds like a plea. Psalm 42:7 is where that comes from, but the Psalmist wasn’t writing from a place of comfort; he was writing from a place of being overwhelmed. I’ve found that God doesn't always calm the waves. Sometimes, He just lets you drown in His presence until you realize that even at the bottom, there is nowhere else to go. It’s not a tidy feeling. It’s terrifying, really. But there is a strange, cold comfort in knowing that the water you’re drowning in is, in fact, His mercy.

Then there is that simple declaration: "I'm Yours, You're mine."

It’s an odd thing to claim ownership of the Almighty, isn't it? My old mind goes straight to the Song of Solomon—"My beloved is mine, and I am his." We spend a lifetime trying to prove our devotion, trying to earn our keep, but eventually, you realize that all the striving is just dust. You get to a point where you stop asking for miracles and start asking for company.

"One thing I ask, one thing I seek," they sing. It echoes David in the sanctuary, but I wonder if we actually mean it. Does it hold up when the bank account is low or the health is failing? When I sing that now, it feels less like a grand vow and more like a desperate, whispered necessity. It’s the prayer of someone who has nothing left to offer but their own presence.

I don’t know if this song is built for the long haul. I don’t know if these melodies will survive the way the old psalms have survived the centuries. Maybe it is just a bit of noise in the middle of a busy life. But tonight, listening to these voices, I find myself sitting in the dark, wondering if "You're mine" is the only anchor I have left to toss overboard.

It’s enough. For today, it’s enough. Tomorrow, when the light hits the floorboards, I’ll likely have to figure out how to believe it all over again. That’s the work, I suppose. Just staying put.