Dear Blog Readers,

I wrote this response paper for an English class on the music of Bob Dylan--my favorite singer and songwriter.  A friend of mine revealed to me that "Blowin' in the Wind" is about pot.  That interpretation never occured to me, maybe because I don't smoke.  I would like to think that the Holy Spirit is the solution.  Anyhow, the following is a reflection on Dylan's "When the Ship Comes In". I would enjoy reading your reflections!

“When the Ship Comes In” is a song of hope.  It makes me think about the second coming of Christ and what that would be like.  It would be a time when life as we know it comes to a halt: “The time will come up when the winds will stop and the breeze will cease to be breathin.  Like the stillness in the wind.”  It would be a time of quiet and then roaring skies, and all eyes will look into the sky and see majesty and wondrous signs: “Oh the seas will split and the ship [Christ] will hit. And the morning [eternal life] will be breaking.” Revelations 12:1-3 reveals that at the second coming of Christ, great cosmological signs will appear in the sky indicating the triumph of Christ over the Devil (12:5).

I would imagine there to be a great joy for everyone who was looking forward to this day.  Even the creatures will rejoice: “Oh the fishes will laugh as they swim out of the path and the seagulls they'll be smiling.”  The creation of the Earth before the fall of man, according to the Book of Genesis (chapter 1), rejoiced in the presence of man, because he was created in the likeness of God. 

The fourth stanza relates to Christ’s coming to break the bonds of this material world of sin: “For the chains of the sea will have busted in the night.”  Thus in the end the Devil will not win.  I interpret the chains to be the Devil, and his loss to be the chains’ being “buried at the bottom of the ocean.”  Once sin is defeated once and for all, Christ will “drift on to the shoreline” to gather all his servants and everyone will be so happy that they will sing praises to God: “A song will lift as the mainsail shifts and the boat drifts on to the shoreline.”

In the sixth stanza, Dylan describes a carpet of gold for the weary toes.  In Revelations Chapter 7 it is written that people will never hunger or thirst or be weary again (16).  Christ is like the carpet of gold, the comfort to the weary, the Lamb (17).

Finally the last few stanzas describe the unbelievers who will fight the will of God to the very end: “Oh the foes will rise with the sleep still in their eyes…but they'll pinch themselves and squeal and know that it's for real, the hour when the ship comes in.”  At the very last moments of their earthly lives, these people are given the chance to repent.  Entry 1041 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

“The message of the Last Judgment calls men to conversion while God is still giving them ‘the acceptable time, . . . the day of salvation’ (2 Cor 6:2).  It inspires a holy fear of God and commits them to the justice of the Kingdom of God.  It proclaims the "blessed hope" of the Lord's return, when he will come "to be glorified in his saints, and to be marveled at in all who have believed” (Titus 2:13; 2 Thess 1:10).”  

But the truly evil people will have no place in Paradise (Mt 13:24-30). As Dylan says, “They'll be drowned in the tide, and like Goliath, they'll be conquered.”