Sinaha Rali Hamuwe

Amid the ripples of laughter, among the drops of tears,
sitting close beside me, lovingly,
you speak, and I hear it…
I heard… your voice, I heard it..

When my heart broke and I wept and wept,
sunk in the deepest sorrow,
on the day you seemed to tire of me and looked away,
I heard… your voice, I heard it..

I still love you, just the same as ever..
the love I could not receive from you,
I went and searched for in the darkness..
and I saw… I saw your face..
amid the ripples of laughter..

This is a tender hymn about hearing God’s voice and seeing his face in the whole range of a life, in joy and in grief, in nearness and in the times he seems far. Its opening holds both extremes together, “amid the ripples of laughter, among the drops of tears,” and in both, the same discovery, “sitting close beside me, lovingly, you speak, and I hear it.” Whether things are happy or sad, the beloved presence is near and speaking, and the refrain rings with the relief of it, “I heard your voice, I heard it.”

The second verse is the darker one, and the most moving. “When my heart broke and I wept and wept, sunk in the deepest sorrow, on the day you seemed to tire of me and looked away.” Here is the ache of feeling abandoned, even rejected, by the very one we love. And yet, remarkably, even in that moment, “I heard your voice.” The sense of being cast off did not match the reality; the voice was still there.

The final verse is faithfulness answering apparent absence. “I still love you, just the same as ever,” the singer insists, and confesses the wandering that followed, “the love I could not receive from you, I went and searched for in the darkness.” But the search through the dark ends not in more darkness but in a face: “I saw your face, amid the ripples of laughter.” What the listener is left with is a quiet reassurance that love, whether read as the soul’s love for God or God’s for the soul, survives the times of feeling unheard and unwanted, and that those who keep listening will hear the voice again and, at last, see the face they longed for, smiling.