This week, Josh preached from Matthew 13:24-30. Our songs were gathered around the theme of evil (Or at least trying to make sense of evil in the world while having faith in God). 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 or email me at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs
Death In His Grave by John Mark McMillan
Future/Past by John Mark McMillan
It Is Well by Horatio Spafford
There Will Come A Light by Jameson McGregor
Lord, I Need You by Matt Maher
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.
Death In His Grave: We sang this song to reflect once again on the fact that the death and resurrection of Jesus changed the course of human life--that the end goal of human existence is no longer death, but resurrection.
Future/Past: We sang this song to emphasize the fact that to be related to God through faith is to love and be loved by One whose perspective is much greater than our own. This means that God is worthy of our trust and worship in the midst of suffering, and that we can be confident that God is weaving human history into something more beautiful than we can imagine.
It Is Well: This song offers a sense of perspective in the face of grief by claiming that regardless of what happens in the world around us, we can be unflinchingly joyful about the future. Though this is true, I mentioned yesterday that this can come off as somewhat dismissive of the pain that we feel in the midst of evil, and that Jesus' response to the death of Lazarus in John 11 tells us that the fact that things are going to be ok does not mean that they are currently ok, and we do not have to pretend that they are. With this in mind, when we sing about the future hope that we have in Christ, let us not do so looking past our present pain, but rather into it, saying, "This too is being redeemed by God."
There Will Come A Light: This is a song I wrote for the "Hope" week of Advent a couple of years ago. Advent songs often explore the darkness of the world searching for the Light that comes at Christmas. As a result, they can easily transcend the bounds of that short period of the Church calendar and serve as declarations of the hope we have now as we wait for the Kingdom of God to come fully.
Lord, I Need You: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at the songs we sang two weeks ago (I was on vacation last week). This is what we said about it then: Though the death and resurrection of Christ have changed what is true about humanity--that we are no longer slaves to sin, destined for death, but rather creatures who are in the process of being made new, destined for resurrection--we are constantly tempted to live as though this were not true. The Spirit is working within us to transform us into people who live like Christ. We sang this song to remind ourselves of this, and to express our awareness of our dependence upon God.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM