Bring Me To Life... A Song Revisited

"How can you see into my eyes like open doors?
Leading you down into my core where I've become so numb
Without a soul my spirit's sleeping somewhere cold
Until you find it there and lead it back home

(Wake me up)
Wake me up inside
(I can't wake up)
Wake me up inside
(Save me)
Call my name and save me from the dark
(Wake me up)
Bid my blood to run
(I can't wake up)
Before I come undone
(Save me)
Save me from the nothing I've become

Now that I know what I'm without
You can't just leave me
Breathe into me and make me real
Bring me to life"

-First two verses and refrain from "Bring Me To Life" performed by Evanesence

Writer(s): Ben Moody, David Hodges, Amy Lee
Copyright: Chrysalis One Music Publishing Group Ireland, Zombies Ate My Publishing, Forthefallen Publishing, BMG Rights Management (Ireland) Ltd.



Photo Courtesy of Chief David Bretz

I was at the funeral home visitation for a friend who passed away a short time ago. While standing in line to view my friend and speak condolences to the family, I heard the music playing with the slide show. The music actually caught my attention before the slides did... Evanesence... "Bring Me To Life."

I know the song well. Back in 2005, I spent hours setting pictures of the destruction left by the November 6th, 2005 tornado to this very same piece of music. It just seemed to fit back then. The song is dark and it seemed to invoke the feelings that I had felt as a responder during those early morning hours before sunrise when we knew it was bad (then of course, the sun came up and we knew then... it was worse than bad). The song seemed to fit, "save me from the nothing I've become."

I remember the debris being all over the place. I remember the stories. I have even met many who were victims.

Photo Courtesy of Chief David Bretz

Everyone did their jobs. Lives were lost before we even had a chance to get there. In those cases it probably would not have made a difference anyway. Lives were lost in the rubble. Some lives were saved by interventions of rescuers... others by paramedics. The surgery departments at both hospitals were busy places that morning.


I remember the frantic search for one of my Cub Scouts that lived in the mobile home park that had been hit. It was four days later before I found out he was indeed alive and safe.

Anyone that was there was affected in some way. It was

Photo Courtesy of Chief David Bretz

overwhelming. It was also one of those events where everyone could say they did what had to be done as well.

So here I was nine years later, standing in a line at a funeral home. I had not heard the song in many years, Once again, from the secular side of me, the song seemed to fit the environment. That was as far as it went though as my very next thought was that the song did not fit at all. The Word simply came on the next thought...

"For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God."
- I Corinthians 1:18, ESV

and...

"For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

-Philippians 1:21, ESV

 

We do not have to have our name called to be saved from the dark. The Book of Jeremiah tells us that God knew us while we were still in the womb (1:5). He has breathed into us an made us real unto Him through His Word. Christ has paid the price so that we will not become "nothing."

 

"...for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."

- I Corinthians 6:20, ESV

 

So many in this world despair when darkness comes into their lives... either through disaster and calamity or to them as an individual or family. Never forget the end of the story. It has been written and Satan knows how it will play out. In case you don't know, he has already lost.

 

Death is the penalty for sin. Christ overcame death and the stone was rolled away. For those in Him, death holds no power.

 

The song says as its climax, "bring me to life." This happens not through the dark pleading as the song writers have scripted, but through His body and His blood given and shed for us.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evansville_Tornado_of_November_2005