Unspoken - The Cure Lyrics

Video

Unspoken - The Cure (Lyric Video)

Meaning & Inspiration

My Bible sits on the nightstand, its spine held together by electrical tape and the oils from my own skin. When I hear Unspoken sing, "We’ve all got a sickness / A terminal condition," it doesn’t feel like a clever hook. It feels like the truth I’ve seen in hospital waiting rooms and at gravesides.

We spend so much of our youth trying to self-medicate, don't we? We reach for status, for comfort, for the approval of people who will eventually forget our names. But when you get to my age—when the joints ache and the skin thins—you stop pretending that the distractions are working. That "terminal condition" they mention, that's just the human reality of a heart that’s been separated from its Maker. It’s the ache that St. Augustine talked about, that restlessness that stays even when you’ve got a full belly and a warm bed.

I look at my hands. They’re spotted and steady, but they’ve held plenty of things I thought would save me, only to watch them turn to dust.

The line that catches me, every single time, is, "The king and the beggar bleed the same." It brings me back to the foot of the Cross. In the eyes of the Almighty, we are all just beggars. I’ve sat in pews next to men who owned banks and women who had nothing but the clothes on their backs, and when we knelt for communion, the floor felt exactly the same beneath all our knees. There is a terrifying equality in our brokenness. If we aren't all equally lost, then grace doesn't mean much, does it?

But then there’s the medicine. "You are the cure."

Sometimes I worry that we treat Jesus like an aspirin—something to take when the headache of life gets too loud, then set back on the shelf. But the older I get, the more I realize He isn’t the aspirin; He’s the oxygen. He’s the only thing keeping the lungs moving when the air gets thin. Hebrews 4 tells us we have a High Priest who isn't unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, and that’s a comfort that doesn't wear out. It’s not just a nice thought for a sunny morning. It’s what you cling to when the lights go out at 3:00 AM and you’re staring at the ceiling, wondering if you left a mark on this world.

I don't know if these words are just "young man's noise" to the kids today, or if they’re hearing the weight of them. I suspect they hear it more than they let on. We all have that void. I’ve tried to fill mine with work, with pride, with worry, and with all the wrong kinds of noise. It never worked. It only ever left me hungry.

There’s a tension in the song, a sense of "reaching out," that stays with me. Even after forty years of walking with Him, I find I am still reaching. I am still, in my own way, looking for the Cure to finish the work He started. I don't have all the answers. I just know that the Doctor is the only one who has ever looked at my history and decided to stay. That’s enough for tonight.