When You Touch Me

I’M COMING TO THE CROSS AGAIN,
The place where all the sin and shame
Of what I do
Was squarely placed on You.
The pressure’s more than I can take;
I’ve tried to walk in my own strength,
I lay it down
Before Your thorny crown.

I’ve tried so hard to be somaeone
That You’d be proud to call Your son,
To earn the love
I know I don’t deserve.
When I think I’m standing tall,
The greater height, the bigger fall.;
Now all I see
Is my futility.

But when You touch me,
I feel the burdens slipping down again.
And when You touch me,
Can’t stop the tears from falling down like rain.

I feel the shame of shallowness,
The kind of measured holiness
That seems to fit
The life I want to live.
How much of this is wood and straw?
I want to work for something more
Than piety,
Respectability.

And when the words cut like a knife
And harsh rejection haunts my life,
I tell myself
This was the pain You felt.
You walked this road a thousand times,
The victim of the cruellest crimes
And left for dead
By every friend You had.

And when the accusations came
And You refused to play their game –
No words of hate
To set the record straight.
And when they taunted at the cross
‘If You are God, then save Yourself!’
You set Your face
To free this fallen race.

Stuart Townend