Master's Voice - Then And There Lyrics

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The Master’s Voice | Antonette Grace Ompad (Cover)

Meaning & Inspiration

My hands are a bit gnarled these days, the kind of map that shows every struggle and every harvest I’ve been through. I was sitting on the porch, thumbing through a copy of the old hymns, when these words from Master's Voice drifted through the screen door.

They sing, "Everything about the here and now / Makes me ready for the there and then."

When you’re young, that sounds like a line you hum because it’s catchy. But when the joints ache and the friends you started with are mostly tucked away in the churchyard, that sentiment carries a different weight. It’s not just a theological concept anymore. It’s the realization that the world—the one I’ve worked in, worried in, and raised children in—is getting thinner. It feels less like a solid foundation and more like a coat I’ve outgrown.

I find myself thinking of the Apostle Paul, who wrote to the Corinthians about how we groan in these earthly bodies, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling. People call it "homesickness" for heaven, but that makes it sound like a whim. It isn’t. It’s an ache that settles in the marrow. When they sing about being "ready for the then and there," I have to be honest: sometimes I am, and sometimes I’m terrified. The "here and now" is all I’ve ever touched. The "there and then" requires a kind of surrender that I’m still practicing, even after forty years of Sunday services.

There’s another line in the song: "I can tell them about the time I can take them to the place / How I made it all the way by grace."

That stops me. I look at my own life—the mistakes, the times I let my temper get the better of me, the nights I spent doubting God even while I was praying to Him—and I realize there isn't a single victory I can claim as my own. If I get to stand before that Savior and tell a story, it won’t be a story of my greatness. It’ll be a confession of how I stumbled through the dark and found a hand reaching out to pull me up, over and over again.

Will these words matter when the shadows finally lengthen and the house is truly quiet? I suspect they will. They aren't just loud, energetic notes. They are a declaration that we are aliens here. It’s a hard thing to admit when you’ve spent your life building a home, but there is a strange, quiet freedom in knowing that your real address is somewhere else entirely.

I’m still here, watching the sun dip behind the trees, listening to the crickets, and wondering what that "meeting in the air" will actually look like. I don't have all the answers. I just know that the grace that held me at twenty is the same grace that’s holding me now, and I’m beginning to think that’s more than enough.