This was the second Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were once again gathered with the Holy Spirit in mind. Below, you’ll find the list of the songs and artists. Clicking the song titles will take you to the lyrics. Below the songs, you can find recordings from Sunday morning of a few of them, and below the recordings, 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 atjamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs:
Your Love Is Strong by Jon Foreman
Pain by Jameson McGregor
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.
Just A Closer Walk With Thee: In the wake of Pentecost, we have entered into ordinary time, though the Holy Spirit is still very much on our minds. Just A Closer Walk With Thee is in many ways a song we might think of as being directed toward Jesus, but the Spirit is our connection to the Person of Jesus. Furthermore, the presence of the Spirit among us is central to our following Jesus, as Jesus lived by the Spirit. With this in mind, the core petition of this song is addressed to Jesus, but seeks the guidance of the Spirit.
Your Love Is Strong: This song is essentially a meditation on the Lord's Prayer, with an emphasis on being transformed into Kingdom people. When we think of transformation, we think of the Spirit--the Spirit is the One who does the weaving of our stories, who dwells in our interconnectivity and helps to shape us. We sang this song to ask the Spirit to continue this work.
Be Thou My Vision: As with the previous two songs, we sang this song as a petition to the Spirit to shape us into people whose vision, wisdom, security, and hope, are all oriented toward the love of God.
Pain: I had the opportunity to share this song a couple of months ago at a service at Baylor that was a Space for Lament for people affected by sexual violence. This song is ultimately about how damaging pain of all kinds can be when buried inside of us, and how God is able and willing to take the weight of our pain. By that, I don't mean take it away, though I believe in time God moves us forward on a journey of healing (however that might look), but instead I mean that God takes the weight upon Godself--that we don't carry it alone. The second verse of the song has a more particular kind of pain in view: that of keeping secrets, of sweeping our own evils under the rug and carrying around the guilt. God carries this pain with us as well, and enacts healing for these situations. Last week, the institution of Baylor began the process of reckoning with its own evils. And this reckoning has the potential to be painful in many different ways. But God is in the midst of this kind of pain too. I recently put out a video of this song, which you can watch here:
Holy, Holy, Holy: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at our songs from two weeks ago (I was out of town last week). This is what we said about Holy, Holy, Holy then: We sang this song to begin our time together singing about the particularity of God, as we acknowledge the Spirit as part of the Trinity for the first time in the Christian calendar this year.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM