Robin Mark - My Song Is Love Unknown Lyrics

Video

Robin Mark - Days of Elijah (Official Lyric Video)

Meaning & Inspiration

I’ve spent a long time turning the pages of old hymnals, watching the ink fade where my thumb has rested for decades. Robin Mark’s version of this hymn—stripped of the usual organ bellows and given a different kind of urgency—caught me off guard the other night. When the house is quiet and the aches in my knuckles start to settle in for the evening, I find I don’t have much patience for melodies that just aim to stir up a crowd. I need something that can hold up the roof when I’m feeling small.

The line that keeps snagging on my spirit is: "Love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be."

It’s a peculiar, messy sort of grace. In my younger years, I used to think that meant I had to polish myself up to be acceptable—that the "lovely" part was a destination I had to arrive at. But sitting here, looking at these weathered hands that have fumbled through plenty of failures, I realize it’s the other way around. He doesn't wait for us to be lovely before He extends the hand. He reaches into the wreckage first, and the loveliness is just the dirt getting washed off over time. It’s a bit frightening, really. To be loved when you have nothing to offer—not a song, not a service, not even a steady heart—is a kind of vulnerability that doesn’t sit easy with a man who spent his life trying to be self-sufficient.

Then there is that bit: "For who am I, that in my place / My Lord should take frail flesh, and die."

Scripture tells us in Romans that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. I’ve recited that verse in boardrooms and at gravesides. But it hits different when you are staring at your own mortality. I’ve known "frail flesh" for a long time now. I know what it feels like to break, to tire, to lose the edge. To think that the Creator of the stars would willingly take on the very fragility that keeps me up at night—the shaking hands, the fading breath—is almost too much to hold.

Does it offer comfort? Yes, but it’s a demanding kind of comfort. It doesn't promise that the shadows won't lengthen; it just promises that someone else walked through the deepest ones first.

Sometimes I worry I’ve turned these songs into wallpaper, something that’s just there while I get on with my day. But when the lights go out and the noise of the world finally stops, I find I’m not standing on my own accomplishments. I’m just waiting to be part of that "glorious throng." I suppose I’m still learning what it means to be "lovely" in His eyes, and I suspect I’ll be learning that lesson right up until the moment I draw my last breath and finally find out what that song sounds like in person. It’s a strange thing, feeling both finished and just beginning.