I recently watched “Wakanda Forever” with my daugter (I know…late to the game). It was awesome.
One of the songs in the soundtrack captivated me from the very first moment I heard it: “Alone” by Burna Boy. It is so catchy and uplifting, and I immediately added it to my library.
And I know now why it captivated me to such a degree: the entire song is a prayer to God.
The narrator of the song asks poignant questions: what do you do when “you feelin' like you're fallin'/And you can't find nothing to hold on to?” Or, what will you do when “When you're feelin' like you're screaming really loud/But nobody hears you?”
It is a difficult situation, and I can feel the anguish in his voice (and the music just amplifies it to the next level). And so, he turns his hands and heart upwards to the Lord, praying: “When my whole world is set on fire/Don't leave me alone.”
It resonates so very deeply with me. And the part of the song that shook me to the very core was this: “Don't let them take my head/And dance over my dead/Body, yeah.”
Who is “they"? It can be any enemy. For me, it is Satan - the “whispering, elusive prompter who returns again and again,” according to the Qur’an (114:4) - who will not stop until my very last breath to take me off the Path of God.
And so, when I hear those words in the song, “Don’t let them take my head/and dance overy my dead body,” I can imagine him gloating over my dead body because he won and deceived me to the point of failure. It frightens me to the core.
And so, I echo the prayers of the song’s narrator: “Give me the strength I need for my body”; and “When my whole world is set on fire, Don't leave me alone”; and “Don't leave me, don't leave me, oh God/Don't let me go down, don't let me go down”; “And I need you to remind me why/Give me the strength to keep fightin’.”
If I leave this fight up to only me, I am destroyed. I need Him and His Strength to keep me going, keep me fighting, to keep me on the path of righteousness - to the best of my ability - until my very last breath.
Lord, please, don’t let the enemy dance over my dead body. Lord, please, don’t let me go down. Lord, please, don’t ever leave me alone.