You Haven't Seen The Last of Me

I had my iTunes on shuffle earlier tonight and the song "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" from the movie Burlesque came on.   The song talks about being down and coming back from the ashes and I thought about how that theme correlates to the spiritual life.   I'd be willing to bet the farm that the neither Diane Warren, the writer, nor Cher, the singer, thought about the song in the spiritual sense--especially since the underlying theme is, "I'm tough enough to come back from this" with no mention of God.



In the movie, Cher's character, Tess, is about to lose her night club and is on her last leg.   We can all relate to being in the place where Tess is"
       Feeling broken
       Barely holding on
She continues:
       I've been brought 
       down to my knees and 
       I've been pushed 
      way past the point of breaking
Perhaps it's in the troubles of the every day world such as Tess is fighting or perhaps it's in our daily spiritual battles where we are fighting sin and it's temptation.   Sin can really beat us down and if we are in a state of sin we are definately broken and barely hanging on.  Fighting back from those temptations can take us to our knees and past the point of breaking.

Tess shows hope--the same hope we need to have--when she says:
      And I'm down but I'll get up again
      Don't count me out just yet.
      I'll be back
      Back on my feet
      This is far from over
      They haven't seen the last of me yet
This is the confidence we need to have--maybe not just in ourselves, like Tess seems to have--but in the fact that God is with us and as St Paul said, "If God is for us, who can be against us." (Romans 8:31)

I especially like the part that I can imagine talking to Satan--the great tempter:
      You don't know me
      You don't know who I am
      Don't count me out so fast
This doesn't mean to demean Satan--because sadly, he does know us very well.  He knows our weaknesses and which buttons to push to get us to stray away from God.  But he does NOT know us as God knows us.   God knows us far better than we even know ourselves because He loves us so much.   So, when we are standing behind God, we feel like we can snub our nose at the Devil and say, "You don't know me!  God knows me!"

In a way, this song is about the gospel.  It preaches the good news.  That it doesn't matter where we are spirtually.  It doesn't matter how beaten down we are.  God doesn't care how entrenched we are in sin.  He only wants to lift us up again so we can be with Him.  From the druggie to the thief to the cheater--all God wants is to be reconciled with us.

The down fall to this song is that it's all about "I."   The truth of the matter is, we can NOT do it alone.  We MUST have God's assistance.   That is the difficult part about reconciliation---getting past the "I."   We must put our pride aside and walk into that confessional.  It is only then that we may hear those blessed words, "Through the ministry of the church, may God grant you pardon and peace and  I absolve you of your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."