Music

EPIC Series, Song #7: The Church's One Foundation

        This song conveys, with soaring conviction, the passion with which Christ loves the people He has gathered together and named the Church. This gathered people is pictured in scripture as a bride, loved by her soon-to-be husband, fought for and guarded by Him, waiting for the beautiful day yet to come when the life together will begin. The words of this song are rich and full of truth-phrases, and this stirring new melody lifts a weary heart. The sheet music, complete collection of verses, and other resources can be found here.

EPIC Series, Song #6: Hail to the Lord's Anointed

        I’m excited to share as a church this new song for the era of the Savior, the era of Jesus! At this point in our journey through scripture, and in our learning of new songs, it is time for us to jam a little. These pages are sharing with us the story of our rescue from the cycle of sin and our world of death by the only One who can save us, Immanuel (which means “God-with-us”), that is good news indeed! Maybe you'll feel inspired to shuffle your feet, maybe engage in a little clapping, something that helps you express the joy that this gospel truth calls us into.
 
        The term “anointed one” is the root for the word Messiah and I encourage you to remember when you sing the refrain of this song that we are celebrating Jesus as our Messiah, “great David’s greater Son”, the one who has come to lead us and to save us. Hallelujah!

EPIC Series, Song #5: By Thy Mercy

As we journey through our current sermon series, "Epic: the astonishing story of God and the world", we are currently in the era called "A Nation Banished". As we study this dark period in Israel's history, with prophets pleading with the people to repent and God showing His judgement by allowing the nation to be taken into exile, a song of lament/cry-for-deliverance feel like the appropriate kind of song to spend time with alongside these stories.

The song I've chosen for this era is called By Thy Mercy and is from the Indelible Grace collection of old hymns texts set to new melodies. The same song was also recorded by a similarly hymns-oriented group, High Street Hymns, with a very nice cello line throughout.

I appreciate how this song describes many life situations, some obviously desperate and others subversively challenging, and gives expression to a cry for a deliverance that only God can provide. It is similar to the third song we learned in this series, Desert Song, in how descriptive it is, but instead of a cry of praise By Thy Mercy gives us words to cry out in times of desperation. It is a little darker in tone than a lot of the songs that we've been learning this series (unlike Desert Song it doesn't surge back and forth from major to minor but rather stays with a minor feel throughout) and gives our church needed language for those times in life that we run up against our sinful, fallen state and are compelled to call out to God a prayer for mercy and deliverance.

It has been on my heart that our church doesn't have many songs to sing of this type. On one level I am aware that this kind of song can feel heavy, but on another level I am really glad that we're learning this type of song as a church. The amount of lamentation prayers there are in the Psalms should show us that God wants us to come to him with these kinds of emotions. This song helps us to more fully worship God out of the whole range of life experience and be with him even, and especially, in times of desperate need.

Previous EPIC Songs:

Song #4 ("A King is Crowned" era)

Song #3 ("A Home Given" era)

Song #2 ("A People Freed" era)

Song #1 ("A World Made" and "A Family Born" eras)