It’s a good thing that I’m not judged on my appearance or my behavior, because I would not come out clean, as is suggested in this ancient scene of justice. (The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead depicts how a deceased person's heart is weighed against the feather of truth….notice that feather’s truth on the right scale appears to be heavier than the heart on the left scale.) ‘We’re all dead on such a scale, unless there is mercy and grace’ – a statement that could have been made by all the authors of a hymn they renewed in 2009. Sue Smith, David Moffit, and Travis Cottrell were moved by the classic 19th Century hymn first offered by Charlotte Elliott, and so they took Charlotte’s “Just As I Am” and added some words that build on her original confession – “I Come Broken” (as well as other conditions). They evidently were stirred by Charlotte’s words ‘I Come’, which conclude each of her poem’s original seven verses. Charlotte also had weighed herself on the ancient scales of justice, prompting Sue, David, and Travis to summarize and recap the brokenness Charlotte and the rest of us feel. Like Charlotte, they don’t just confess, but come boldly in search of God’s renewal. How do you come?
Though we know not exactly the specific episode that caused the thoughts of Sue Smith, David Moffitt, and Travis Cottrell to coalesce in the first decade of the 21st Century, what they fashioned from Charlotte Elliott’s hymn is in black-and-white. Did our three contemporary writers have experiences in worship when people responded to the singing of Charlotte’s ‘Just As I Am’, perhaps even during a Billy Graham crusade, which helped spur their poetry? Do we come differently, we who are two to three centuries beyond Charlotte’s poem? Sue, David, and Travis answered that several maladies afflict us, even as they surely did in Charlotte’s time. Not only are we all ‘broken’, but each of us is ‘wounded’, ‘desperate’, ‘empty’, and ‘guilty’ (song’s refrain). Yet, these composers weren’t content to just whip themselves with cords in remorse; each of the woes they mention has an opposite that closely follows the diagnosis of the trouble. The statements ring out like proverbs: I’m ‘broken’ but know I need to be ‘mended’; I don’t want to remain ‘wounded’ but ‘healed’; my ‘desperate’ state can be abolished when I’m ‘rescued’; that ‘empty’ feeling is transformed when I am ‘filled’; and, though the scales say I’m ‘guilty’, somehow I am ‘pardoned’. Could Solomon have said it any more pithily?
These ‘proverbs’ make the worshipper want to shout out, with a hallelujah-like energy that testifies to how radical and miraculous God’s work is on the human transgressor’s condition. I might have been on my death-bed, but now I can run a marathon. God’s ‘welcome(ed) with open arms’ tells me that He’s just as thrilled as I am at the change. This ‘blood of Christ’ is the remedy, unique and divine, with a potency that works wonders on my condition. He alone possesses the correct formula, that’s all I need to know. Just be who I am, and admit I’ve failed. Could it be that His willing provision for me is because I’m His image-bearer? And so, when I connect with Him, I connect also with other humans I’ve never met like Charlotte, who’ve sought and swallowed the same antidote that Sue, David, and Travis recommend. Perhaps only when I meet all these other centuries-old image-bearers will I completely appreciate the scope of His magnanimous nature. He reaches anyone who comes to Him, just as they are. Just bring yourself and see what happens.
This video indicates the song was written around 2009: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwlUGuzisBw
One author-collaborator’s biography is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Cottrell
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