This was the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs were gathered around the theme of reconciliation. 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 at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs:
Pulse by Jameson McGregor
There by Jameson McGregor
Hope by Jameson McGregor
There's a Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)
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.
How Great Thou Art: This song is essentially three pairs of observations about how God chooses to be God for us and a response of praise. In it, we find language that helps us marvel at the scope of God's redemption project--from the inception of the cosmos to the moment where things are finally set right. In singing this song, we rehearsed identifying greatness for what it is, and in this case that means seeking to draw near to one's enemies and repair broken relationships (that's one of the running themes throughout the story that God is telling).
Pulse: We sang this song to acknowledge the presence of the Spirit in every living thing, to petition God to reconnect our awareness to this interconnectivity, and to show us what this means for the way we love one another.
There: This song establishes God as standing apart from every source of anxiety or conflict that we encounter. Though God is in fact with us in our affliction, God is anchored outside of it. This means that we have a well-founded hope when we root our hope in God. As Reconciler, God is drawing us into the place of security where God dwells.
Hope: We sang this song to affirm that God has set a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome. We hang our hope on this light, carrying it into the darkness, knowing that the story that God is telling does not end in darkness, but light.
There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at the songs from two weeks ago (I was on vacation last Sunday). This is what we said about There's A Wideness in God's Mercy then: We sang this song to begin our time together by thinking about the wideness of God's mercy and the breadth of God's love. More specifically, in terms of the theme that unites this week's songs, the fact that our deficiencies are precisely what place us in the path of God's love. Despite our tendency to attempt to construct boundaries around the love of God, the love of God transcends our limitations and reaches those who deserve it least by even the most generous human standards.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM