If you’ve ever had the good fortune to catch one of the concerts in Andrew Peterson’s annual “Behold the Lamb of God” tour, you won’t want to miss his concerts this month, the first annual “Resurrections Letters” tour. Andrew will be singing a couple songs from his upcoming release, Resurrection Letters, Vol. II, and a couple of older songs, including Flesh and Blood and Doxology (Romans 11) that he recorded on Appendix A (the leadsheets I transcribed for those last two are on Appendix M). Jill Phillips will also be singing songs from her album Kingdom Come. If you’ve ever sat through an Easter program at your church, you probably know that the defining characteristic of church musicals is bad, cheesy dialogue. Painfully bad, most of the time. Fortunately, and not surprisingly, Andrew’s writing does not fall into that category. The short meditations he wrote to transition between most of the songs, several of them reminding me of the kind of stuff Michael Card writes, brought a tear to my eye more than once when I read them yesterday. And I can imagine they will only be more moving in the context of the concert, with the songs swelling around them and over them, all of it coming together to remind us that Christ has made all things new, to tell us again the story of His love and His mercy and our salvation.
I’m bummed that I won’t get to hear any of the concerts on this tour. The closest stop to Nashville is the last show on the tour, in Knoxville on the 22nd, and since that is my Mom’s and sister’s birthday I’ve already got plans to be with them in Chattanooga. So yesterday afternoon, I dropped by a rehearsal and heard most of the songs as they were working through them with the full band. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this if you can help it. All Things New was one of the songs that jumped out at me when I read through the lyrics for Resurrection Letters, Vol. II a couple months ago, and it again grabbed my attention with lines like “Hold on to the promise / the story is true” and “He is making all things new”. I was telling my sister this past weekend why I love Andrew Osenga’s line in White Dove that says “Every sad thing will become untrue”, and the stuff I’ve read from N.T. Wright and Shaun Groves, among others, on living out the paradox of the now-and-not-yet of the Kingdom of God, something I never heard taught growing up in Fundamentalism. On Sunday I heard Craig, the pastor at City Church, talk about the effects of the curse being reversed through the work of Christ, and Andrew sings about the unraveling of the curse. Christ has redeemed us, has redeemed creation, but we still live in a fallen world. He is making everything new, but at the same time, again as Andrew sings, “My Jesus has made all things new.” Therein lies the paradox, and I’m glad to be reminded of it. Check out the tour dates here.
On a side note, Andrew’s new book, “On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness”, comes out next Tuesday. His publisher sent me a copy to review a couple days ago, and last night, sitting next to a blazing fire with a cold bottle of one of my favorite beers in hand (Black Mocha Stout: Highland Brewing Company’s most robust beer, having a very malty body with a large, roasted chocolate flavor), I read about two hundred pages and then finished it this morning. I’ll have a full review coming next week, so all I’ll say for now is that I loved it! It was a fun, entertaining, and suspenseful. I have one copy to give away, so stay tuned when I post my review.
Sometimes, living in California really does feel like living in a different country, I always miss out on these tours.
Look forward to your review, I, too, loved the book!