Delta Dawn

Recently I've had a song coming to me. The words of it are seemingly about a young girl who waits for her boyfriend to return but he doesn’t show. “Delta Dawn” was made famous by Helen Reddy but has been sung also by Bet Midler and others. Why this song I asked as it circled like a vulture while I worked and again as I woke to another day. It’s as if the Spirit is speaking to me and I’m too dense to understand so I did some research and was astounded to find others had similarly come up with something spiritual in the song.

The story in the lyrics is about the woman who waits for her man’s return just as the Church awaits Jesus return still these thousands of years later. It reminds me of the way the Church says Jesus will return but somehow that day eludes us, year after year, century after century. It’s as if Jesus plays this cruel trick on us who have fallen in love with him. But it’s not a cruel trick of Jesus doing; rather it’s a trick of our theological misunderstanding of the words Jesus has said. Delta Dawn could on one hand be that woman named Dawn from the river delta but it also could be the delta triangle of Father, Son and Holy Ghost dawning on us as believers in unbelief.

Christians can often feel like they are waiting for the day Jesus returns, suitcase full of baggage in hand at the bus stop, ready to be taken up to that carefree mansion in the sky. This world has not treated them favourably and they long for the day things look up for them in the promise of a glorious afterlife. I know I have been there asking the Lord to take me now because this life is a struggle. But that image of life is not the overview Jesus left for us in the Gospels who try our best to follow him. Jesus made it clear there was work to do when he gave the commission to “Go.”

Paul suggests quite clearly there is urgency to this race we run in this life; that Jesus would have us quickened to complete the task, i.e. to destroy the works of the devil. The Church talks about this returning Saviour but in the most part it’s all talk and not much walk. The truth eludes those seduced by the evangelist’s emotive line, “Jesus will return soon.” Church goers lose confidence in the preachers who have used it to solicit quick decisions for Christ only to become brides in waiting for the bridegroom who tarries. Some suggests the Mary Magdalene’s.

So what is a bride in waiting to do; like Delta Dawn she slowly loses her brightness as the faded rose of Sharon. The faded rose tells of the dwindling faith that comes with disillusionment. But it’s never meant to be that way, like the parable of the ten virgin’s account, half let their oil run out and half kept their oil topped up. There are those who “Go” and there are those who don’t. There are those apostles who go forth and are led by the Lord and there are the stay-at-home’s; the ones who do nothing but wait.

Delta Dawn is that image of the faithless waiting for a free ride to heavenly glory while life rolls on by without them. My own experience is the colour is in the going…

Delta Dawn, what's that flower you have on / Could it be a faded rose from days gone by
And did I hear you say he was a-meetin' you here today / To take you to his mansion in the sky-eye
She's forty-one and her daddy still calls 'er "baby" / All the folks 'round Brownsville say she's crazy
'Cause she walks downtown with her suitcase in her hand / Lookin' for a mysterious dark-haired man
In her younger days they called her Delta Dawn / Prettiest woman you ever laid eyes on
Then a man of low degree stood by her side / Promised her he'd take her for his bride