How Sweet The Sound

How Sweet the Sound
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The deafening roar of a waterfall
nothing more than a whisper
the greatest proclamation a soul has ever heard
The single, purest note
cascading to a triumphant symphony
drowning out
Chaos
And the empty noise

Eternity
as an unceasing shooting star
slitting its way across the heavens
stealing the breath from every man's throat
As they begin to realize
all that is needed in life
is this untameable
and reckless

Oh, the power of grace
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How many times have we heard and even sang the lyrics to the hymn Amazing Grace. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me…” Certainly anyone who has attended a church more than once in their lifetime has heard those words and sang that melody. But how many of those people have actually taken the time to contemplate them?
What is the sweet sound of grace? Allow me to paint you a picture with my words of the image my mind conjured up when thinking about that very question.




Samuel ran through the dark woods towards the black mountains that stood, cold and forbidding, along the horizon. Escape. The one word that ran in circles through his head and pounded its way through his veins with every blow of his foot upon the ground. The sharp rocks that jutted up from the ground between the trees made running an almost impossible task, yet Samuel could not stop. He had to escape this dead place.
Nothing lived here. Even the trees had burned and died long ago, left standing like tottering monuments to some fallen angel. In fact, everything here looked as if it had been burned, the grey and black grass that crunched under Samuel’s feet, the blackened shale that sliced its way through the broken ground, the scarred trees, and even the occasional stream seemed to be a dark grey pallor. Dead. He had to escape this.
So Samuel ran. What else could he do? Climbing a tree earlier that day had done nothing but shatter what hopes he had of escaping this desolation, the forest stretched on for miles until coming to a stop just beyond his line of sight at the base of the mountains. So he had chosen to run to the mountains, the only way that might present an escape.
Time dripped on, giving no sense of day or night, the only change was the strength of the wind. It blew steadily at times, and then it would stop, only to blow with a massive force that stopped Samuel in his tracks and forced him to drop to the ground and grasp at stones and roots to keep himself from sliding backwards. And always the wind blew against him, no matter what direction he ran.
And still Samuel ran.
Stumbled.
Fell.
Only to get back up again and try to run, but as he took another loping step his ankle twisted on an unseen root and he fell. Instinctively, Samuel reached his arms out to protect his face, only to feel the sickening slice of the shale sinking through the skin and muscle of his hands and forearms. His body shuddered with the shock of such intense pain. Escape. Escape. The escape that had pounded through his veins was now spilling onto the grey earth and draining through the ashen grass. He tried to stand again, and toppled over, this time cutting his legs. As he stood and stumbled and fell a third time, his head cracked against a rock and his world spun into blackness.
Samuel’s eyes snapped open to see a swirling black sky. Welcome to Hell. What a way to wake up. The clouds warred with each other in the heavens, and the tree’s swayed and cracked in the wind, which had now gained strength. His arms. Samuel slowly eased himself up, back propped carefully against the charred bark of an oak tree, and checked his arms. The bleeding had stopped, but strips of skin hung from his forearms like white straps of leather. Surprisingly, the pain had seceded to nothing more than the dull pounding of a hammer in the back of his skull. Livable. An ironic thought in this dead place. Samuel ripped his shirt into strips, and carefully wrapped his arms to keep the dangling flesh from getting in his way. Odd how rationally his mind was working. Maybe he really would find his way out…
Silence.
Everything had come to an freakish grinding halt; the wind, the clouds, and even Samuel’s breathing. Then he realized that was only because he was holding it. So he breathed, and every whoosh of air that flowed from his mouth sounded like an earthquake. The air that Samuel sucked in was stale. Dead. As if it hadn’t moved, much less been breathed for thousands of years. He had to move. Move. But his body didn’t. Every muscle and bone in him seemed to have stopped the rest of this desolate place. All he could do was breathe the cloying air.
Then everything broke. The clouds shattered with a tremendous crack and black drops of rain crashed down on Samuel’s skin, stinging with the strength of the strongest acid. Lightning tore the clouds into shreds and reached towards the earth as if seeking to revenge itself upon a hated tormentor, its thunderous voice roaring with enough force to knock Samuel back to the earth. And then the wind came again, whipping the rain into darts that felt as if they were cutting through his skin.
Escape.
Run.
So again, Samuel ran. This time aimlessly, his only hope to find some type of shelter from the raging skies. He tripped and stumbled, but kept his balance. Ran on. Tripped. His ankle made a sickening popping sound. Ran on, limping now. Tripped again, and fell flat on his face in the black mud of ash and acid rain. His arms were bleeding again, and his hope bled away with them. There would be no escape. There was no way out of this dead place. His tears joined the blood that dripped down his arms. Hope was dead. He was dead.

Something reached into his brain and burst like a firework. A melody. Nothing more than a whisper, drowned out by the sounds of the wind, thunder, and the crash of falling trees. But it was a melody, the purest note of hope. Samuel rose to his feet and stumbled towards the sound, every note of the song trickling to his soul through his ears. The volume of the note rose, spiraling and dancing its way among the burned out trees, pouring out life that had long since left this crater.
But as the melody grew, so did the thunder and the storm. The wind turned to an iron fist that pounded its way through the trees, ripping screams from between their branches and from the hollows of the rocky ground. The thunder roared in its attempt to silence the note. Yet the melody still grew, sending deep vibrations rolling through the ground, shockwaves that brought Samuel to his knees, only to drag him forward with an insatiable thirst to hear more.
Then a second note joined the first, the same note, but much higher, they intertwined perfectly and slammed into Samuel’s heart, stopping what breath he had left in his throat.
And a third note, impossibly high, soared above the first two, this one piercing though every cell in his body and tearing him apart. He fell to his knees, panting, tears streaming down his face. He couldn’t handle it, and yet he needed more. He needed more. So on his hands and knees Samuel dragged himself closer to the sound.
The thunder still roared, and the wind still screamed in its attempts to drown out the song, but none of that mattered. Only the melody; the purest notes of life that flowed from somewhere through the trees. The rain still burned its way along his skin, but Samuel took no notice. The melody held every ounce of all of his senses.
Then another note. Thousands. Each joined with the perfect symphony that had already begun, rising to a crescendo that drowned out the world. The thunder cracked through the sky, but it was nothing, a whisper during the roar of the epic story that was being played out through the melody. And still the song rose in volume, higher and higher. It had become more than a song, it was a beam of light, crashing upwards through the blackened skies and tearing through to the blue above. And it grew, stronger, brighter, louder. Until it shook every piece of the fabric from which Samuel was made. And louder. Samuel’s heart would collapse if this continued, he knew it. He would die. But that didn’t matter, he desperately wanted more. The melody was everything, he was nothing, the storm was nothing, his arms, soaked in his own blood were nothing.
And then the melody faded, quickly. Silent. The storm had not stopped, but the music had. Everything seemed worthless without those notes tingling their way through his body. Dead, but not in the way he had hoped, with that song coursing through his veins. No, now the song had died, and with it hope was dead. He was dead. Samuel rose to his knees and threw his head back to scream at the skies. But nothing would come. His tears still traced their way down his cheeks, but now it was from despair. The melody was gone.
But he was wrong. Again, the melody whispered to his ears, sorrow strained through its tone now. A tune of mourning for one lost. Samuel’s heart broke again at the tune, how could he know what loss really was? Could his torn flesh and broken bones bring the sorrow and despair expressed in this new song? This was despair, this melody.
And now the music faded again, but only for the space of a breath. In a massive crescendo, the music returned. Note upon note, it flowed from the center of the forest, shaking through the ground and ripping back the clouds that constrained the sky. It was a tidal wave, drowning Samuel and everything around him. It was life. Love. This is what it meant to be alive. The dead earth split in two and flowed with vibrant blue water. What was left of the trees began to change and grow, becoming a flourishing forest in a matter of minutes. The rocks melted at the force of the song, and in their place grew up thousands of plants, brilliant shades of green and a rainbow of flowers.
How long the music continued, Samuel was not sure. He only knew that its sound was the only truth that really mattered. That that melody, played in the depths of the darkness, could bring life to even the deadest place. This was the sound that his heart had always longed so deeply to hear. This was the sound that every fiber of his being had ached for from his conception. This was the sweetest sound of grace.

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“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now am found. Was blind, but now I see.”



- The Fallout