A Ballad to God – “Annie’s Song”

The inherent beauty and majesty of John Denver’s Annie’s Song can make any person capable of loving and being inspired. I heard it said once, that any ballad could be seen as a love song to God. This is certainly true of Annie’s Song. It was written as an anthem to Denver’s then-wife. Physically and spiritually overjoyed, he wrote it in as little as “ten-and-a-half minutes one day on a ski lift”[1] in Aspen, Colorado--immersed in the rich feelings and sensuality of nature.

The poem, that is the song, is unmistakably worshipful. The music, along with the lyrics, is chillingly reverent and an ideal accompaniment in expressing our love of God and his created world. Perhaps with the knowledge of the tune we can reflect on the words:

ANNIE’S SONG (John Denver)

You fill up my senses like a night in a forest

Like the mountains in springtime, like a walk in the rain

Like a storm in the desert, like a sleepy blue ocean

You fill up my senses come fill me again.

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Come let me love you, let me give my life to you

Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms

Let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you

Come let me love you, come love me again.

Gospel Relevance of Annie’s Song

Can God perhaps fill our senses? Can we give our lives to God? And also perhaps, in tune with Psalm 23, we can lie down in God’s green pasture, drown in his laughter and die in his arms? Could we be prepared and willing? Even now?

God has the ability to lift us, with our senses, our intuition, our thinking and our feeling. It is the Person of the Holy Spirit who guides in inspiration, giving life a distinctly paranormal flavour.

Have you perhaps not “felt” life like this in a while; the pure wonder of life and of being a special child of God’s? Can it be that Jesus might be your personal Saviour, the one to create--perhaps for the first time--an awe and a zest for life in you. Yes, it’s both real and wonderful. We can drink deep of him; he can fill up our senses like nothing else, not even the profusion of a gloriously created world can compare with this Bread of Life.

Holy Spirit, come fill me again; give me life that I never knew.

Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

[1] Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie's_Song