This week, our songs were gathered around the theme of healing. Yesterday we had a celebration service for the life and legacy of Kyle Lake, our former pastor, marking 10 years since his death in 2005. If you weren't able to attend the service, I'd encourage you to go check out kylesfilm.com where you can read about Kyle's story. 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
How He Loves by John Mark McMillan
Rescue Is Coming by David Crowder* Band
Wayward Ones by The Gladsome Light
Hope 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.
Because He Lives: We sang this song to name the hope of the resurrection of Jesus over/against the pain of loss. This is not merely future hope, but infuses every moment of life with great significance, making it worth living.
How He Loves: John Mark McMillan has a video telling the story of this song--I think it is important to hear him talk about where this song came from, so I really hope you'll watch it. He wrote this song in response to the death of a close friend, and we sang this after Craig, a close friend of Kyle's, had just shared with us about the way in which Kyle was a gift of God to him and to ubc, and about the journey he has had since then. I suppose there are several reasons we needed to sing this song in this service, but perhaps the greatest is to put a voice to the fact that the love of God is not beaten back by the anger and grief of loss. Instead, this love holds strong through those seasons--in the midst of those seasons.
Rescue Is Coming: Josh asked me to put this song in the set this week because he remembered Kyle having a visceral and joyful reaction to it one of the first times Dave played it at ubc. He told the story of that moment before we sang it and encouraged us to join with Kyle in that moment in singing this song. As with Because He Lives, this song sets our eyes on some sort of future hope, but the purpose is to affect the here and now--to not give up in the midst of pain--to have the courage to let deep wounds heal. [Note: Letting deep wounds heal does not mean getting the scars lasered away--while wounds can be debilitating, scars are vessels of memory and carry the story of healing in their own way.]
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.
Hope: We sang this song to proclaim a story that is fundamental to the story of the cosmos: God lit a fire in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome. We can think about this in many ways--creation and the life/death/resurrection of Jesus are pretty straight-forward examples-- but we sang this song to proclaim it as the story of ubc in the past 10 years.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM