This week was the second week of Advent, and our songs were gathered around the theme of peace. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, there is an example of one way you might think of these songs in light of this week's theme. If you want to talk about any of these, feel free to comment at the bottom of this page or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs
Hope (There Will Come A Light) by ubcmusic
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
Peace (Change Everything) by ubcmusic
Make This Go On Forever (Refrain) by Snow Patrol
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
How They Fit In:
There are many ways to think about the significance of songs and the way they fit together–-this is simply one way you can look at these songs in light of this week’s theme.
Hope (There Will Come A Light): I wrote this song a couple of years ago for the first week of Advent. A few months ago, I wrote songs for all the other weeks, too, so we will sing the whole series of songs over the next few weeks. I recently recorded some video sessions of these songs with some friends in Austin. The video for this song has been posted here.
Come Thou Fount: We sang this song to think about the peace that God has extended to us as people who are not necessarily deserving of reconciliation. If you don't know, the "Here I raise my Ebenezer" line is referring to the idea of a monument that would remind us of what God has done for us--it's the "looking back" that we talked about last week as being our source of Hope.
Future/Past: We sang this song to think about the looking back and looking forward that comes along with Advent. The reconciliation that God offers us is not limited to a fixed point in time, but is instead an activity that is carried through all of time--something we can look back at with gratitude and look forward to in faith.
Peace (Change Everything): This is a song that voices a longing for peace. More accurately, this song voices a longing for several different kinds of peace: peace from existential despair, physical violence and threats, less tangible violence and threats that exist in our minds, and the threats that accompany the natural processes that carry our bodies from birth to death. We'll be singing this song a few more times this month, so feel free to listen to it again here.
Make This Go On Forever (Reprise): We once again closed this week's advent song with this reprise from the end of a great Snow Patrol song (spoiler alert: we'll do this next week and the week after as well). The point is to voice the longing that we live in during Advent: while we may not understand how it will happen or when it will happen, we know that God is the One who can save us from this present darkness.
Wayward Ones: We sing this song every time we take communion to remind ourselves of a couple of things. First, we are a broken people--though we are seeking to become more like Jesus, we often fail at this. Second, Christ has given Himself for us despite our brokenness. We take communion to remember the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf, even though we did not, and do not, deserve it.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM