Singing Sunday 2

I don't have a hymn for today - just a bridge from a band I love - House of Heroes and their song "Field of Daggers". Simple words, but they could just have easily been penned by Fanny Crosby - had she known how to play a killer bass or lead guitar...

"Spread wide Your wings, O God,
Relieve this scarlet fever,
Catch every tear of mothers in mourning.

Bring life to tired hopes,
Buried in fields of flowers,
Bring many sons of battle to glory.

With every drop of blood,
Caged in this tired body,
I long to bring my father to glory.

I see a new day coming!
Maybe tomorrow...
Woe to the king of nothing.
I see a clean blood running,
Brothers of sorrow.
Here is your kingdom coming!
Here is your kingdom coming!"

I like these lyrics because for me Lent always brings a season of disappointment. I'm not good at keeping my word, or fasts very well - and any success I have in either department leads often to pride and me realizing that I missed the point of whatever spiritual discipline I have embarked on at current. But it reminds me that I am working towards and end that I cannot achieve by myself - the doing of the will of God and a love for Him. In these words, I see God's ultimate purpose and rejoice in it - but I also see how powerless I am in light of it. It doesn't depend upon me, but for my sake, God wants me to get involved. This song - and all others in that particular album by house of heroes pretty much chronicles things throught he perspective of being a "soldier" for Christ. And lent tends to be an introspective and hard slog in the battle at times but its also a good time to be reminded why we are "fighting the good fight."

I think the verse today from the Epistle captures it magnificently. We are in the war because:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. - 2 Corinthians 5:21

There you have it. We are fighting because we are being made into what we tried in vain to be ourselves - the righteousness of God. In a culture and age obsessed with self-salvation, self-satisfaction, and self-aggrandizement, I don't have to go far to find my idols. Yet, somehow, God is taking fallen, imperfect and impetuous man and is redeeming us for his glory?


I like Rev. Timothy Keller's paraphrase about Christ's sacrifice "He took a man who died loving us so that we might live to truly love others." Sometimes I focus on the outward fruit of my faith without realizing that first and foremost it takes a deeper and more significant inward devotion to and adoration of the God who picks us up out of self-imposed dust-heaps.

Praise Him, and keep rockin.