Don Williams - Imagine That Lyrics

Video

Don Williams - Imagine That ft. Keith Urban

Meaning & Inspiration

The sun is setting low across the porch, and these old hands, spotted with age and stiff from the damp, are finally resting on my knees. I’ve been listening to Don Williams. There’s a particular way he carries a tune—no hurry, no fuss—that reminds me of how the light hits the stained glass in the sanctuary right before the evening service begins. It’s quiet. It’s honest.

He sings, "Oh Lord, I wish I had you back / But all I can do is imagine that."

I’ve spent forty years folding my hands in prayer, learning that some petitions don’t get answered in the way we mapped out in our youth. There are bedrooms in this house that have been quiet for a long time, and I know the particular weight of silence that sits in the corners when the house goes dark. People want to tell you that faith means you shouldn’t feel that absence anymore, that if you just pray hard enough, the loneliness dissolves. But that’s young man’s talk. It ignores the ache that stays in your marrow.

There’s a raw, brutal honesty in saying, "All I can do is imagine." It’s an admission that we are currently living in the "not yet." King David, a man who knew a fair bit about longing, wrote in Psalm 13, "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?" He wasn't reciting a doctrine; he was howling at the ceiling. Don Williams captures that space between the desire for what we’ve lost and the reality of the empty chair.

It’s hard to sit with that. We are so quick to slap a bandage of "it’s all for the best" over a wound that’s still bleeding. But maybe, just maybe, the act of imagining is a form of grace.

When he sings, "No more silence in the hall / no more staring at the walls," he’s describing a hunger for presence. We are made for community, for the touch of a hand, for the sound of a voice that knows our name. To pretend that we don’t miss that, even when we’re walking with the Almighty, is to lie to our own souls.

I don't know if this song is meant to be a hymn. Most folks wouldn't call it one. But there is holiness in the admission of the gap. If we never admitted that we were missing something, we’d never look toward the horizon for the return of the King. We wouldn't need the promise of a place where there are no more tears.

I’m sitting here, watching the dust motes dance in the fading light. The house is quiet. The ache is still there. But Don Williams makes me feel like it’s okay to be a man who is waiting, looking at the door, still wishing, yet still—somehow—breathing. And that has to be enough for today.