Nupanna Nam Lyrics by Ashen Madushan Fernando

“Better if I had not been born, my Lord,”
so I thought, looking back at my weak and failing life
in this very moment, crushed under the weight of my sins,
how am I to pass my weakness through this lonely desert?

When the world walked away and left me,
when my sinful heart wept all alone,
the answer was you, my Lord, it was you
the one who saved me, my Lord, was you

You who love me more than anyone,
O potter of my life,
mould me as you please, my Lord,
and carry me close to yourself, my Lord

This is a hymn that begins in despair and ends in surrender, tracing the exact path many believers walk in their lowest moments. Its opening is startlingly bleak, a thought spoken to God in complete honesty: “better if I had not been born, my Lord.” Looking back at “my weak and failing life,” “crushed under the weight of my sins,” the singer feels he cannot go on, and asks the question of the hopeless, “how am I to pass my weakness through this lonely desert?”

Then comes the turn, and it comes precisely at the point of total abandonment. “When the world walked away and left me, when my sinful heart wept all alone,” the answer was not more despair but a presence: “the answer was you, my Lord, it was you; the one who saved me was you.” God met him at the very bottom, when everyone and everything else had gone.

The final verse is one of the most beautiful images of surrender in Scripture, the potter and the clay, drawn from the prophet Jeremiah, who watched a potter reshape a spoiled lump of clay into something new. The singer offers himself in exactly that way: “O potter of my life, mould me as you please, my Lord.” Having been ready to give up on himself, he now hands himself over to be remade, and asks only to be kept near, “carry me close to yourself.” What the listener is left with is deep hope for anyone at the end of themselves, the promise that the God who meets us when the world has gone is also the potter who can take a broken, wished-away life and shape it into something good.