This week was the seventh Sunday of Easter, as well as the Sunday closest to the Ascension. Our songs were gathered with both of these themes 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 at jamie@ubcwaco.org.
Songs:
Crown Him With Many Crowns by Jameson McGregor
Mystery by Jameson McGregor (adapted from Charlie Hall)
Rise Up by Bifrost Arts
Bonfire by Jameson McGregor
Lifted/Lifting 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.
Crown Him With Many Crowns: This song is equal parts an acknowledgement that Jesus Christ is Lord and a spoken reminder to ourselves that this is the case. The values that Jesus' lordship represent are not synonymous with our cultural values, and so this reminder has implications for the way we think and live.
Mystery: As we exit the Easter season, we sang this song to once again proclaim the truth of Jesus' defeat of death and stealing of the bite of systems of power.
Rise Up: In the Ascension, there is both a direct charge given to the disciples to spread the good news of the Kingdom throughout the world, and an implicit charge to grow in to the body of Christ and continue the work Jesus had begun. This song is a plea for God to rise up in our midst and transform us into agents of hope, change, and justice--to continue to transform us into the presence of Christ in our immediate surroundings.
Bonfire: This song looks forward to the coming of the Kingdom in fullness, envisioning a great assembling of God's creatures, broken or otherwise, on the shores of a redeemed earth.
You can stream this song for free here.
Lifted/Lifting: This song is about the continual coming-to-understand of the Christian faith. Any idea that we grasp about who God is can only serve as a placeholder for a deeper understanding of God as we are further renovated into the presence of Christ on earth.
Doxology: We close our time together each week with this proclamation that God is worthy of praise from every inch of the cosmos.
-JM