This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of prayer. 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:
All Creatures of Our God and King by David Crowder* Band
Your Love Is Strong by Jon Foreman
Fall Afresh by Jeremy Riddle
Pain by Jameson McGregor
SMS (Shine) by David Crowder* Band
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.
All Creatures of Our God and King: We sang this song to begin our time together conceiving of all of creation praising the Creator. Interestingly, this song spends a great deal of time regarding the movements of planetary bodies as praise. We may consider prayer broadly as a form of address to God, so, naturally, praise would fit the bill for some form of prayer. Thinking this way, we might consider prayer the natural state of the cosmos--a fundamental part of what it is to be.
Your Love Is Strong: This song has Jesus' model prayer (the Lord's Prayer) embedded into its DNA, both broadly in the verses and explicitly in the bridge. In using this prayer to frame the repeated "Your love is strong," we proclaim to both God and ourselves the driving assurance behind the Lord's Prayer.
Fall Afresh: This song is itself a prayer to the Holy Spirit asking for revitalization. We sang it, in part, to practice addressing the Spirit in prayer together, and also specifically to practice voicing the desire for the Spirit's presence among us.
Pain: This song is about the fact that God can handle brutal honesty about our pain in prayer. There is a strong (that almost feels like an understatement) tradition in Scripture of the people of God voicing their pain to God--both in crying out for help and in raising a charge against God--and God never seems to smite people for their honesty. God can take it. God can take it because, through Jesus, God understands our pain. And more than just being willing to listen to us voice our pain, God is faithful in working to weave our most tragic stories into a story that is decidedly untragic.
SMS (Shine): We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about SMS (Shine) then: We sang this song to give voice to the longing that we all share at one time or another to be lifted out of dark places, or at the very least to be given some kind of glimpse of God when we feel abandoned. We voice this longing confidently, knowing that God hears us when we call and does not cast us aside.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM