This was the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, and our songs around the theme of power from below. 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:
There's a Wideness in God's Mercy by Jameson McGregor (adapted from F. Faber)
All the Poor and Powerless by All Sons & Daughters
House of God Forever by Jon Foreman
God of the Dead by Seth Woods
Heart Won't Stop by John Mark McMillan
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.
There's A Wideness in God's Mercy: 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.
All the Poor and Powerless: This song continues the theme from There's A Wideness in God's Mercy, underscoring the fact that what we might consider as a hindrance in life--poverty, loneliness, heartbreak, etc, actually postures us to encounter and worship God in a way that is nearly impossible in the absence of adversity. God is for the socially less-than when no one else is.
House of God Forever: This song uses the language of Psalm 23 to think of God's provision for the people of God--a provision rooted in a power that is outside of any of us and is not determined by our own ability. We sang it to practice locating our hope in God and not in ourselves.
God of the Dead: This is a song by Seth Woods, a guy who used to play music at ubc every now and then. He has an album of songs that were recorded at ubc (by Jon Davis, who is still around) that I came across a few months ago. It's $7 and it's great. So buy it. I'm drawn to this song for the assortment of images it associates with God that essentially amount to names for God (God of the dead, God of the breathing again, God of the earth, God of the grave, God of the rising and the raised......I would go on, but you can just click the lyric link). These names aren't super familiar to us, and that's important. Because they offer us fresh vantage points from which we might look at God. And in contrast to verses that offer new names for God, the chorus is a petition that God would breath our new names. That God would teach us who we are in a fresh way. That we would hear names that were stripped away of all the things we build up for ourselves in the identities that we construct.
Heart Won't Stop: We sang this song to look over our shoulder at last week's songs. This is what we said about Heart Won't Stop then: We sang this song to begin with the confession that there aren't any barriers that God is unwilling to transgress to reconnect with God's children.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM