The second post in “The Song of the Week” series.
The previous post in this series:
1. “These Are Days” - Natalie Merchant
It occurred to me recently that music sits pretty close to the intersection of the key themes of this Substack: reading/writing, community, and formation. The songs we sing are deeply formative for us as persons and communities. So, I thought I’d share a song each week that has been formative for me, and offer a couple of brief thoughts that connect it with this particular week (in the church calendar and/or natural year) and explore why it is significant for me. Let me know what you think…
Apologies for missing last week in this series! I was away at The Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University. (The Festival was a delightful experience as always, and maybe I should do a writeup here about it eventually.) I had hoped to write the song of the week post before I left for the Festival, but that just didn’t happen…
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As I noted in my first post in this series, most of the music that I listen to is from the 1980s and 1990s, so this song (released in 2019), although not new by any measure, is likely one of the newest songs that will be featured here. It is also an outlier among most of the music I prefer to listen to in that is was written for a Christian audience.
“The Kingdom is Yours” is a fitting song for the Easter season, a song of hope, and particularly a song about where our hope comes from, especially in seasons when hope seems so elusive:
The Kingdom is yours, the Kingdom is yours
Hold on a little more, this is not the end
Hope is in the Lord, keep your eyes on Him
It also is a contemporary reinterpretation of the Beatitudes. The song begins:
Blessed are the ones who do not bury
All the broken pieces of their heart
Blessed are the tears of all the weary
Pouring like a sky of falling starsBlessed are the wounded ones in mourning
Brave enough to show the Lord their scars
Blessed are the hurts that are not hidden
Open to the healing touch of God
“The Kingdom is Yours” offers rich imagery of the resurrection life into which Christ leads us, a life that see the brokenness of the world (in us and around us) and yet is a life that is without fear. (I’m grateful for my friend
’s diligent efforts to bring back fearless as a key descriptor of Christian faithfulness in these days when the predominant forms of cultural Christianity are saturated with a host of fears.)In our age in when Christian nationalism runs rampant, marked by all sorts of fears — racism, homophobia, xenophobia, etc. — the vibrant, biblical imagery of God’s reign, as depicted in this song, stands as a compelling alternative.
From my perspective, the rich vision of God’s reign depicted in this song, is not only timely, but is precisely the sort of hope made possible through the resurrection that God’s people need in dark times like our own!
What songs stir a similar resurrection hope for you?
This post is made freely available to Substack readers, but if you appreciate The Conversational Life, please consider helping to sustain our work with a paid subscription ( $5/month or $50/year ).
Whew. I'm so grateful you are posting these rich songs. It's been a minute since I have actively sought out Christian music. This particular song, and the Common Hymnal, is just beautiful. Thanks.
Thank you so much for highlighting this amazing song. I hadn’t heard it but now agree it’s one of the best.