You Will Be Mine
You Will Be Mine
Have you ever read a line in a book or heard a song that seemed to speak directly into something you were thinking or feeling at that very moment? It can take your breath away. God may speak to us in unexpected and unusual ways—but only if we are willing to listen, and to wonder at what we hear.
Recently, I had just finished reading a book by the English author Caryll Houselander. I found myself lingering over a striking passage in which she writes that, in seeking Christ, we are:
“Saved from the worst of all diseases—being satisfied. The man who is satisfied with himself and with things as they are to-day really admits despair… in the search we become aware of the wonder and mystery that contentment blinds us to.”
Those words stayed with me. And not long after, while still turning them over in my mind, I got into the car—and a song I hadn’t heard in more than thirty years came on the radio: Strange Currencies by R.E.M..
Even the title is mysterious. But it was the opening lines that caught me:
“I don’t know what you mean to me…
but I want to turn you on, turn you up, figure you out.”
Faith, it seems to me, begins in this same place. We seek to know God—only to discover, slowly and almost imperceptibly, that He is seeking us. Even the desire to seek Him is already His work within us.
This seeking has a kind of restlessness about it. It resists easy answers and shallow contentment. It carries the quiet but persistent sense that there is more—more than we can explain, and more than we can ignore. The lyric, “I don’t know what you mean to me… but I want to figure you out,” feels like an honest expression of that human condition.
Throughout the song, one line returns again and again:
“These words—‘you will be mine.’”
The singer seems both drawn to and unsettled by it, as though hearing something he cannot quite understand. And yet, in the Book of Isaiah, we hear words just as direct, just as intimate:
“I have called you by name; you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1).
This is not the language of possession, but of belonging. It is simple, but its depth is inexhaustible. It speaks of a relationship that precedes our understanding.
Augustine of Hippo recognized this long ago in his confession: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” And Blaise Pascal observed that “the heart has its reasons which reason does not know.” We are drawn by something we cannot fully name.
In Strange Currencies, that movement deepens. Curiosity becomes pursuit—and then, most striking of all, the sense of being pursued:
“These words, they haunt me, hunt me down
Catch in my throat, make me pray.”
We imagine that we are the ones seeking God. But again and again, we discover that we are not the hunters, but the hunted.
Francis Thompson gave this truth its most haunting expression in The Hound of Heaven, where God is the relentless pursuer of the human soul:
“I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years…”
But the flight is never successful. The pursuit is patient, unyielding, and merciful. And in the end, God reveals what was true all along:
“I am He whom thou seekest.”
What begins as our search becomes something else entirely.
Perhaps the most honest prayer is simply this: I don’t understand. I’m not even sure what I believe. But I am drawn—and I will follow.
And in time, we begin to see that we were never alone in the search.
We were being led all along.
Strange Currencies, by R.E.M.
I don't know why you're mean to me
When I call on the telephone
And I don't know what you mean to me
But I want to turn you on, turn you up, figure you out
I want to take you on
These words, "You will be mine"
These words, "You will be mine
All the time"
Now fool might be my middle name
But I'd be foolish not to say
I'm gonna make whatever it takes
Ring you up, call you down, sign your name
Secret love, good rhyme
Take you in and make you mine
These words, "You will be mine"
These words, "You will be mine
All the time," oh
I tripped and fell
Did I fall
What I want to feel
I wanna feel it now
You know with love come strange currencies
And here is my appeal
I need a chance, a second chance, a third chance
A fourth chance, a word, a signal, a nod, a little breath
Just to fool myself, to catch myself
And make it real, real
These words, "You will be mine"
These words, "You will be mine
All the time," oh
These words, "You will be mine"
These words haunt me, hunt me down, catch in my throat
Make me pray, to say love's confines, oh