"Oh Do Remember Me. Way Beyond The Blue."
When I was a kid we sang this song a bunch, as all good Christian kids do to this day. I never understood it.
I remember asking a teacher once when I was still pretty young what the song meant. Do I really need to ask God not to forget me? I didn't think he ever forgot anything. And what does 'way beyond the blue' mean?
The answer was something like, "Well, those are just the words to the song." That wasn't really a good enough answer, but you can't argue with the teacher. I didn't know at the time that she didn't have any more of a clue than I did. I sort of thought it had something to do with 'the sweet by and by', which is only related in that neither phrase made any sense to me.
Later on, as I looked at pictures of the blue earth taken from the moon, I decided that 'way beyond the blue' meant outside the confines of this life and the crap that goes on every day down here, beyond the scope of what I see and hear and could think about. 'Way beyond the blue' is God''s world from which he created this one. Then I thought about gloryland (pronounced glow-ree layand), and decided that people who used words like that probably had no idea what I was talking about.
The whole thing was funny to me. Here's a song that everyone knows, but nobody knows what it means.
But it sure is nice as a grown up, at least in my own eyes, to be able to stop the chaos and noise of days like yesterday, sit in the parking lot at McDonald's and sing,
Do Lord, Oh Do Lord, Oh Do Remember Me.
(Connect with me, join me for just a moment and give me your ear.)
Do Lord, Oh Do Lord, Oh Do Remember Me.
(Let me see what my day looks like from where you stand.)
Do Lord, Oh Do Lord, Oh Do Remember Me.
(Show me how small and trivial all of the stuff I'm stressed about really is.)
Way Beyond The Blue.
It even makes lunch at McDonald's a good thing. I shoulda gone to lunch 30 minutes earlier.