This week was the first Sunday of Advent, and our songs were gathered around the theme of Hope. 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:
Rescue is Coming by David Crowder* Band
Hope (There Will Come A Light) by ubcmusic
Anthem by Leonard Cohen
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.
O Come, O Come Emmanuel: This song contrasts mourning/longing and hope especially well. We sang it to begin out time together by locating ourselves both with the people of God before the birth of Christ and with the whole of the people of God in our own time.
Rescue is Coming: We sang this song to proclaim the same desperate hope that we established in the first song. Though we may be able to look around and see how dark the world is, we are awaiting the coming of a Light. The "rescue" we talk about in this song is not one of escapism--it's one of an in-breaking that delivers us from the brokenness of creation, not creation itself.
Hope (There Will Come A Light): This song was written specifically for advent at ubc. It focuses on the hope of the coming of the Light, but hones in on what that means for the darkness around us--namely, the inauguration of its progressive demise. This song, as well as the rest of our original advent songs are available for free download here.
Anthem: Leonard Cohen had a way of capturing the essence of vulnerability and existential longing. This song is about hope, perseverance, brokenness, and beauty, all of which are prominent themes of advent. The hope we carry toward Christmas is a wounded one, and that makes it all the more meaningful.
Hope: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Hope then: This song voices the hope we have in Christ, the fire in the darkness. In this image that comes into the world through John 1, we find the most fundamental summation of the Christian story--God set a light in the darkness that the darkness did not overcome. Fire is more real than the darkness, such that there is no amount of darkness that can overcome the light of the fire.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM