Ten thousand glimmering like coals in our chest
Ball bearings drawn to the magnetic breath
Of ten thousand weeping with wings on their tears
Amidst ten thousand voices for ten thousand years
For ten thousand graves yawning unlocked and unlatched
Now ten thousand holes with rocks on their backs
Ten thousand tombs gaping wide singing the praise
Of ten thousand bodies unlaced and unlaid
As the ten thousand highways unfold their doors
For the ten thousand standing on Nineveh's shores
Where the blood of a husband silences wars
For the girl who rises to meet him
And she sings
World, I have overcome you
World, I have overcome you
World, I have overcome
By my song and the blood of a son
~John Mark McMillan, Ten Thousand~
Its funny I own this album. I have for over a year now, and yet I just recently discovered this song. It brought me to tears the first time I heard the chorus. And now still brings me to tears as it just did as it came through the shuffle while I was doing my QT. So I pause my Bible study to share this beautiful song and meditate a moment on its truth.
What hits home is the reality of life and death in our lives. We daily experience life as it rolls our way; joy, laughter, tears, pain, victory, loss. All of it. So often we sing and write songs from the assumption that life is about one and not both. On one hand in some places all you find is the problem. Death is more than a reality but the only reality; painting our skies with gray, and filling our rivers with its tears. And on the other, the reality of the solution is so focused on, its like we forget that we even needed a solution to begin with. It almost seems dishonest as we deny, without meaning to, that our skies were ever gray, or that tears were ever shed.
I remember hearing someone say once that hip hop asks a lot of good questions and makes great observations, but rarely is there a true solution to the problem, rarely is there hope. It can be a great vehicle to reflect a reality and culture, but if that's all you listen to, it can lead to hopelessness because there's no way out. Well, that's unless you consider getting rich or dying while trying a true solution. ;) And then there is the other side. Songs about life that sound like the person must have grown up in candy land.
A lot of "Christian" music can come off this way. (That's if you consider Christian to be a musical genre...) I think that is why a lot of people both Christian and non don't latch on or relate to it. It unwittingly feels condescending, like the acknowledgement of pain, or grief is more a lack of faith and less of a by product of living in a broken and fallen world. Like its hopeless counterpart it tells only a partial story. Yes I am free, and I have hope. But is freedom really worth anything if I have not been delivered? Is hope even necessary if there is nothing to hope for?
Life is prized because death exists. Outside of the existence of death, life does not. It loses meaning, or requires a new definition. Because life as we know it stands in contrast to death to acquire meaning. Before the fall and the introduction of death into the world, I doubt Adam and Eve had to "define" life, they just lived. There was nothing to even hint that there was anything other than their reality. And one day, I believe we will get back to that. When believers in Christ meet their Maker and Saviour face to face, death will be long gone and forgotten in the fullness of the presence of the Ultimate solution. I long for that day. When our songs will be of nothing but goodness, love, and joy never ending.
There lies the tension, as Christians our hope and focus is on the eternal, all the while our lives are lived in a temporal world surrounded by people who for the most part have no sense of this eternity. And as we write songs, telling stories to a generation, I believe they should reflect that tension. This reality that in me and all of humanity there is this understanding that something is wrong. People lie, cheat, steal, walk away, and die, sometimes even before their time. Simultaneously, there are days when I am bathed in love, and joy. I look around and can't help but be thankful for all life has brought my way. These realities aren't mutually exclusive, sometimes those days are one and the same.
I think that's is why this song hits home. In my spirit I was dead, and in my life I have seen death physically and metaphorically take its prey. In that I am comforted in God's love and what Christ has done. That is why I praise. That is why I sing. Not because problems don't exist or life is perfect or death isn't a reality but because the grave that I was buried in did yawn, unlock and unlatch! Because I can see the rock on its back! My tomb sings the praise of this body unlaced and unlaid. I worship God because through Him I LIVE in the truest, and realest sense of the word. Where I was once rejected and despised just as Nineveh long ago, the blood of a Husband silenced the wars within my soul.
I am that girl, and this is my song.
"World I have overcome you,
By my song and the blood of a Son."
It is the refrain to a life of dualities, contrasts, contradictions, and many other submodalities.
Revelation 12:11 says "And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death" Some other words used are triumphed(NIV), defeated (NLT), conquered (ESV). It encouraging and enthralling that we win. But the verse says we win not merely by the blood shed but by our stories told. So as we share our songs, let us paint a full picture of what has occurred. Let us sing of death, pain, and heartache, and let us also sing of resurrection from that death, healing from that pain, the mending of our hearts and redemption found in the blood.
That my friends, will touch hearts, change lives, and cross lines once thought uncrossable and reach a generation. Those are the stories that set people free.
After all, did they not set us free?
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