Eric Clapton wrote and sang a beautiful song that was released in 1992. “Tears in Heaven” won three Grammy’s that year. It is the all-time best selling song for Eric Clapton, with over 2,800,000 copies sold.
He wrote this amazing song after something very tragic happened. On March 20, 1991, his four-year-old son, Conner, fell out of the open window of an apartment in New York City. He fell 53 floors to his death. After that unimaginable tragedy, Eric Clapton took off for nine months. When he came back, his music had changed. It was now softer and more powerful and inward looking.
The last verse of “Tears in Heaven” has these powerful words: “Time can bring you down; time can bend your knees. Time can break your heart, have you begging please, please.”
Isn’t that the truth? Someday it might be a doctor’s report or an accident. It might be a misunderstanding or a huge misstep. But the end result is the same and we are begging please, please.
But the Bible offers to us a word of hope. Psalm 139 affirms, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in the grave, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand will lead me, and your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you.”
That is the promise of God for us, especially when time breaks us down.