I'm not going for profundity. A song or album just needs to resonate with me. I don't consider the Hallelujah Chorus or The Lord's My Shepherd as profound, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy them.
On the Aretha Franklin album Amazing Grace Live the minister, her father, introduces the Carole King song "You've Got A Friend" by saying, IIRC, that they would "sing it one way, and then they would turn around and sing it another way. And it doesn't matter. It all depends who you are singing it to. Same words, but we are singing to One who could keep it."
I don't distinguish as he does. If I am singing it as a neighbour, that is singing it to Jesus, in the sense we find in Matt 25.
I wasn't thinking particularly of Christmas and Easter, more of when really difficult things in life happen. Best recent example was when my dad was in hospital with lung cancer; I had driven my mum to visit him and then dropped her home and was going to drive home myself, 80 miles late evening, and I felt prompted to go back to the ward to be with him a bit more. He was barely conscious and I held his hand and prayed and told him I wasn't going to leave him. (He never had any emotional relationship with his children). I felt the Lord right there with me, and hopefully with him too, and he died half an hour later.
Comments
They are pretty conventional and the sort of thing people say all the time.
It's not as if he's the first person to voice objections to organised religion.
Tull were better when they were a jazz-rock novelty band or in their later folk-rock phase. Songs From The Wood is quite jolly.
On the Aretha Franklin album Amazing Grace Live the minister, her father, introduces the Carole King song "You've Got A Friend" by saying, IIRC, that they would "sing it one way, and then they would turn around and sing it another way. And it doesn't matter. It all depends who you are singing it to. Same words, but we are singing to One who could keep it."
I don't distinguish as he does. If I am singing it as a neighbour, that is singing it to Jesus, in the sense we find in Matt 25.
I said resonant, not profound.
That sounds very special @Merry Vole and I'm glad you were able to spend time with your father in that way before the end.
May his memory be eternal!
And may you continue to derive some comfort and strength from your sense of God's presence with you at that time.