To Live Is to Love

To Live is to Love

By Graham Craycraft

You would rarely hear the name Townes Van Zandt and think “Christian” or perhaps if you did you would be conjuring in your mind a man in desperate need of Christ. Van Zandt lived a life of booze and ramblin’ and tragically passed away from a serious hip fracture coupled with his alcoholism. You could say, however, that life killed Van Zandt. He just couldn’t leave behind his demons- something that is tragically and beautifully expressed in his songwriting. He lived a public, if not exaggerated, version of us all. 

Van Zandt’s song “To Live Is to Fly” contains the lyrics “living’s mostly wasting time/and I’ll waste my share of mine/ but it never feels too good, so let’s don’t take too long.” Living, for most of us, does seem to be just wasting time. Little moments that seem to amount to nothing. Even the grand moments of life are fleeting. The Psalmist laments “Man is but a breath/ his days are like a passing shadow.” We are loath to think that applies to our own life, but how about to others? 

Townes goes on to sing, “Days, up and down they come/ like rain on a conga drum/ forget most, remember some/ but don’t turn none away.” You need only think about a random person from a random time and their life seems insignificant. A life that simply fades away. Fades to nothing. Life can seem so pointless. Not all the time to everyone, but by and large, living feels like mostly wasting time and we all waste our share.

But, a life connected to Christ, the daily in and out united to God is a life suddenly full of meaning. “To live is to fly/ low and high/ so shake that dust off of your wings/ and the sleep out of your eyes.” To live is to fly indeed- but not from one fancy to the next or one bogged down day with our eyes set only on rest. To live is to fly to the arms of God and to where we “got the sky to talk about/ And the earth to lie upon.”

“We all got holes to fill/ them holes are all that’s real,” muses Townes. “Some fall on you like a storm/sometimes you dig your own.” A reality for many. A desperate reality without Christ. Another way of saying life is suffering- but if we tragically fill these holes with things other than God (which we all do), sex, alcohol, sports, money, pride, intellectualism, those holes remain empty. If we fill those holes with Christ, we will be satisfied. Christ who emptied himself in order that we may be filled. “Everything is not enough/ And nothin' is too much to bear.” Even Townes, as he filled his emptiness with a multitude of other things, laments that it will never be enough. 

“To live is to fly/ low and high.” To live is to love. Love the high in God, and for the sake of the high, love the low- yourself and your fellow man. Our lives that feel are often wasting time don’t have to be that way. To end in the words of the late, great Townes Van Zandt from the same song, “The choice is yours to make/ Time is yours to take.” So, shake the dust off your wings and the sleep out of your eyes and reach to the one thing that will fill all holes, all emptiness, all waste. God.