Children of God -- Mac Powell, Tai Anderson, David Carr, Mark Lee

 

Watch the video (see the link to it below) that really tells the story well, because it is a powerful optical representation of who the “Children of God” really are. That’s what Mac Powell and his fellow bandmates Tai Anderson, David Carr, and Mark Lee wanted to express both in sight and sound in 2010 when they made this audiovisual product, a way to really tell how their musical group’s name – Third Day – gives rise to a message that transcends what happens here on Earth. Their group’s home base was northern Georgia (see the photo-map of Cobb County Georgia, where the band Third Day originated), but these four musicians evidently found that home was not bound by a plot of ground terrestrially, but by wherever their Maker was living. And, that’s a pretty wide space, considering that He is the Creator of everything and is therefore omnipresent. You and I can go anywhere and be at home, among His family, as long as He is there. And, as the song underscores, we can invite anyone else to come along and feel the same.  

 

Part of the way through the video, you will see adopted children, identified by the t-shirts emblazoned with adopted, who’ve been brought into human families (including Mac Powell’s family, into which his children Emmanuel and Birdie were adopted). Bill Schick, the director of an orphanage in Mexico, and his family are also pictured with some adopted children. The video then moves deeper into the adopted theme with the adults taking off their shirts to show adopted t-shirts, just like the children, highlighting the song’s message that we are all God’s adopted kids, a reason to celebrate and lift His name in thanksgiving. Though God is the reason that all of this celebration is possible, Mac and Third Day use lyrics that emphasize how ‘we’ humans can rejoice with each other in what He has done for each of ‘us’. ‘We’ is in the lyrics a whopping 41 times, while ‘us’ is sung 10 times, and ‘our’ or ‘your’ is sung 13 times. So, I am not alone. Neither are you. That’s great news! And, the lyrics further tell what comes with being an adoptee. I am ‘redeemed’, ‘free’, and a ‘saint’ as a ‘son’ or ‘daughter’. Just imagine that, these four songwriters say: a community of guiltfree saints who’ve been liberated to treat each other as siblings in one gigantic family. This Father-God that we all share is the One who ‘has given us (all) life’, not in just a singular isolated sense, but as a species that He dearly wants so much, that He spilt ‘the blood of His Son’ to consummate this arrangement. We humans, as parents, might adopt at most a handful of kids, because that’s all we can afford – our houses and finances are limited, after all. But if you were a parent with unlimited resources, what would you do? That’s our Father’s angle on this. He chose us, without reserve.

 

Just try getting inside the unfathomable mind of Him who made all of us, and continues to make each of us as time marches on. How would/does He feel seeing His image-bearers, those with whom He wanted to spend eternity, being separated from Himself? What could He, the One who is called Love, do about this? What if He were something besides Love? He also defines justice, mercy, grace, holiness, and so much else that our limited minds cannot comprehend – it’s too complex, too much wattage to absorb. So, He doesn’t want you and me to sort it all out, to understand it to the nth degree. What He’s done might still be a mystery – Paul says our inclusion among His people was hidden for so long (see many passages that talk of this mystery in his letters to the Romans, Corinthians [1^st letter], Ephesians, Colossians, and to Timothy [1^st letter]) – and you and I still might feel a bit foggy. But the video is an echo of Paul’s words – that we’re all on the same plane, all adopted by Him. That is our identity. We all get to Him in the same way, through His love song called Jesus.        

 

 

Watch this official Third Day Children of God video for a visual story that the song conveys: Bing Videos

 

Read about the video that visually tells the story connected to the song: Third Day's new music video shines light on adoption

 

Read about the group Third Day here: Third Day - Wikipedia

 

Read  here some about the director of an orphanage, Bill Schick, who is featured speaking in the official Third Day music video for the song: Third Day, Schick family promote adoption | Samaritan Ministries

 

See information on the map showing location of Cobb County in Georgia here: File:Map of Georgia highlighting Cobb County.svg - Wikimedia Commons …The following statement accompanies to photo: I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Hope of the Nations -- Brian Doerksen

 

He was trying to write a song, and had a brain cramp as he tried to finish it off. Then Sep 11, 2001 happened, and who could forget the images (including this one shown here, when an airliner slammed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City’s Manhattan district) that we all saw on television and other video screens. Brian Doerksen found his “Hope of the Nations” amidst a great terrorist tragedy, and perhaps more people than ever were open to listening to who Brian said was the source of hope. To watch thousands of people die violently no doubt changes how we humans think about life and how quickly it can be snuffed out. Where can you and I turn if this existence is so fragile and uncertain? That was the mental and emotional torment so present on that day, a reality that many of us experienced near the scenes in New York; Arlington, Virginia; and the rural countryside of southwestern Pennsylvania. What Brian wanted was to recenter our attention on another scene, one which showed the opposite of what was seared in memories on that terrible day in September 2001.

 

The scene Brain wanted to draw for people in the wake of 9-11 was in fact a face – a divine one, the only one which could possibly take the sting out of what had happened so unexpectedly in the space of two hours. Brian says he’d been thinking about writing a song of hope since 1999, in expectation of the angst many people might have felt as the turn of the century approached. Y2K had people on edge, for who could really know which computers and other electronic devices might crash as January 1, 2000 arrived, and which ones would still work? But, evidently those fears were not enough to stimulate Brian’s creativity, and his musical project stalled, though he kept trying. By early September 2001, the juices were once again flowing for Brian, allowing him to write much of the song, at least until he hit another creative block. Brian knew that Jesus was the source of hope in what he wanted to communicate, including the thought that this God-Man was needed by all nations, and yet the song remained in limbo for a few days. The tragic events of terrorism a few days hence seemed to crystallize the message in Brian’s spirit, and with newfound clarity he finished the song’s chorus section. In short, Brian said lyrically that Jesus is a ‘hope (that is) living…’ even amidst so many deaths that had horrified those in North America and around the world. Brian’s strategy was to say musically what Jesus provides for stunned people. ‘You are…’ so many things, Brian said to God in that moment. He is ‘hope’, ‘the rock’, ‘the light’, and ‘truth’ (pre-chorus and chorus). Before the 9-11-inspired chorus section, Brian had already written that Jesus is the ‘comfort (for) mourn(ers)’, and ‘Heaven’s hope (for those) on earth’ (v.1), a message that provides for those who suffer, but especially and most poignantly for people in the wake of 9-11. To know that ‘in history, (Jesus) lived and died…(then) rose to life’ cannot but speak intimately to anyone who’s lost someone close. Nothing is more important, as Brian described it, than having a God who ‘conquered fear’ by coming out of a grave that was so brutally imposed upon Him. It doesn’t matter how unfair death is – Jesus is stronger.   

 

Brian Doerksen was in a special place, a place he’d probably have preferred to not be in, in September 2001. And yet, his experience really highlights how supreme is the Creator of life. His is the last say-so, and that is something that Brian counted on as he mused about the calamity that was before his eyes. No death could hold Him down, and that is indeed a ‘light in the darkness’, capable of overcoming the gloom that had enveloped the public who were glued to horrific scenes broadcast in living color. Brian was no doubt as shocked as anyone by what he could see via his television that day, but he didn’t stay there. Imagine a day when all death is swallowed up by life, by the One who gives life. Trust in His benevolent nature, and in His almighty hand. He’s led the way out of the grave already. Get ready to follow, no matter how you went there.       

 

See the song story here: BRIAN DOERKSEN HOPE OF THE NATIONS LYRICS | JustSomeLyrics

 

Read here about the author-composer: Brian Doerksen - Wikipedia

 

See information on the World Trade Center image here: File:Explosion following the plane impact into the South Tower (WTC 2) - B6019~11.jpg - Wikimedia Commons…This image is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work of the United States Federal Government, specifically an employee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, under the terms of Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 105 of the US Code.

God Who Comes to Save -- Glenn Packiam

 

Glenn Packiam had seen enough in his native land, and then later in his adopted land, so that he could say “God Who Comes to Save” no matter where he went as he began to serve in Christian ministry in the early 2000s. He’d begun to serve in a Colorado Springs church (see the flag of Colorado Springs here) shortly after getting his ministry degree, but Glenn had been a musician for a longer period, and that was perhaps why he thought so deeply about the effects of worship and chose to write books about it, in addition to writing music. Music and worship are universal, from Malaysia (Glenn’s homeland) to the United States, but the God whom Glenn described in his music goes infinitely further than those two continents where Glenn’s experience had taken him. This transplanted Malaysian-American Christian didn’t need to travel further to make his case for worship’s power in the human experience. He could draw in his own mind pictures from history that testify to music’s potency, and that’s something to keep in mind when you read one of Glenn’s books or sing one of his compositions.

 

Glenn Packiam hasn’t really said with specificity how he came to write ‘God Who Comes…’, but one can speculate that what he said in his lyrics are likewise at the heart of what he wrote in a 2020 book he authored – Worship and the World to Come: Exploring Christian Hope in Contemporary Worship. There’s a lot of hope in why we sing, Glenn asserts, particularly when we are in seemingly unconquerable situations. Paul and Silas sang while in prison (Acts 16:25), and so much of what happens to us some 20 centuries later must be contextualized the way those two 1^st Century disciples did it – by placing an unassailable hope and trust we have in Jesus’ resurrection over top of each of us as we cope with what befalls us. It’s the main theme of Glenn’s book, and also of ‘God Who Comes…’. You hear echoes of it when he has us sing about our ‘world of sorrow’ (v.1); about ‘our brokenness’ (chorus); and about ‘human weakness’, ‘sickness’, ‘shame’, ‘wickedness’, and ‘darkness’ (v.2). But, over and over again, Glenn doesn’t bemoan or wallow in the human condition; rather, he reminds us that Jesus took on all of those human maladies. One could thank Jesus for stooping toward us, to identify as a fellow sufferer with what troubles us routinely, but there’s so much more than just a divine identification. He defeats these things. He ’…comes to save’, a phrase that Glenn uses to title the song and remind us of this fundamental truth. He's ‘rising up’ as the ‘victor’ (v.2); He’s intent on ‘bring(ing)…life again’, ‘giv(ing) us strength’, and ‘light for tomorrow’ (v.1). That’s why we can ‘follow’, ‘pray’, and ‘praise’ Him (v.1).

 

Glenn adds some of the various names of the God who comes to save, kind of like a postscript to the rest of what he offered in the preceding verses. You just might hear some of these, especially at this time of year when we are reminded of His coming as a babe in a manger. ‘Wonderful Counselor’, ‘Mighty God’, ‘Prince of Peace’, ‘Savior’, and ‘Lord of all’, Glenn recalls from what so many, including the prophet Isaiah (9:6), have said in adulation. The list of names – there are whole books regarding the many names of this God who came to save – remind us just how broad and all-encompassing is His nature. He saves me, and He can save anyone and everyone who wants Him. We all have struggles, the things that we cannot handle, as Glenn reminds us. But, we have Him, too. With this saving God, I can feel safe.

 

  

Read some about the composer-author’s musical production here: Glenn Packiam Chords @ WorshipChords.com

 

Read more about author-composer here: Glenn Packiam - Wikipedia

 

See this link for some exposition of one of the author-composer’s books re: worship: When Christians Sing of Hope: Glenn Packiam's Worship and the World to Come - Mockingbird

 

See here for information on the flag picture: File:Flag of Colorado Springs, Colorado.svg - Wikimedia Commons…This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.