A few weeks ago, particularly the Saturday before Easter, I posted a video of Andrew Peterson’s “Is He Worthy?” video “sight unseen.” As many others, I did my best to hold off on listening to Resurrection Letters Vol. 1 until Easter morning (and contenting myself with the “prologue” ep). I’ve listened to the song a number of times since Easter Sunday, often in my classroom through the main speakers. And I admit to tearing up a number of times.
The song, which features a back-and-forth between Peterson and a choir, acts as a kind of responsive confessional (or at least that’s what I’m calling it). It echoes part of the liturgy, where questions are asked and answered with “He is.” What makes this song especially affective for me is the content of the questions. It’s not just “is Jesus the Son?” or “did God create everything?” Instead, the song draws together a number of significant Christian beliefs that often don’t make it into these kinds of songs through simple declarations concerning the brokenness of the world, the deepening darkness we feel, the groaning of creation (and its waiting for renewal), the idea (present all the way through Scripture) that God desires to dwell with His people. All there and all heartbreakingly beautiful.
So here’s the video again. The whole album is a worthy purchase and can be found here. I’m looking forward to many years of living with this music and singing these songs with others.
I spent most of today (except when mowing and weed-eating the yard) reading the third and final volume in N. D. Wilson’s Outlaws of Time series: The Last of the Lost Boys. Even though the second book in the series, The Song of Glory and Ghost, dropped this time last year (and I bought it release-week), I didn’t actually finish reading it until this morning, too. One of the great things about Wilson’s young adult fiction is that it’s just complicated enough (partly because of time-travel, partly because of an ever-deepening backstory) to really suck you in . . . once you get into the groove. A lot has happened with Wilson since I read the first book in the series. Wilson was diagnosed with a tumor behind his ear. He also released a “prequel” to his other two book series (100 Cupboards and The Ashtown Burials series). The third book in the Outlaws series reads much more like that book, The Door Before, than the first two Outlaws books in that it’s shorter and not quite as dense narrative/action-wise.
Today I had the opportunity to lead out in our school’s annual “faith issues” workshop. One of the aims of the meeting, at least from my perspective, is to continue the conversation of faith integration. The folks over at Comment Magazine recently posted an interesting piece on the role that faith-based institutions can play in a world where technology has made much of what makes the college experience obsolete. From “Christian Higher Educational in an Exponential Age”:
Space Enough, and Time 