What have you been listening to these days?
The Collection. I’ve recommended this band to friends at least three times in the past two or so weeks, and it’s been a prominent feature of my “New Hipster Things” playlist. Surprisingly symphonic, thoughtfully arranged, musically rich and lyrically complex.
The Collection definitely has some fun songs—”You Taste Like Wine” has an enrapturing piano riff, and “Gown of Green” feels quite like a “stomp-and-holler” song—but for me, what The Collection does best is give voice to doubt in a way that is honest and poignant.
In “The Doubting One,” frontman David Wimbish asks
Brother Thomas, did you walk away from Jesus, wondering if it was all a dream
did all your doubts creep back and tell you that your fingers hadn’t ever touched a single thing?”
In this song, he addresses those times when vision is cloudy, when questions abound, and when “nothing ever seemed to grow except my lonely brother’s hurt.” And it addresses wrestling with God over those who don’t know Him, asking God “all the friends I know have never ever met you, does that mean that they deserve to die?” The response to this doubt is a plea that God would come and speak to his friends, because he has experienced God’s voice bringing life to him:
cause all the friends I know have never ever heard you speak
and I know when you speak it brings up life
so would you, pretty please, come speak to all of them and me,
growing us collectively into your wife.”
The song ends with a brief reflection on their sin and on the cross, how Jesus saved him and is able to save his friends:
All my friends and I, we have stolen, we have lied, and we have looked upon each other full of lust
but you carried your cross when you know that I was lost, so I know that you could carry all of us
In the midst of the doubt, there is hope.
In “Broken Tether,” a song that sounds much more upbeat, but still addresses doubt, Wimbish writes about the “days, sometimes even weeks when I can say I don’t believe.”
But he also writes of God’s pursuing, of faith that is growing, so that the days of doubt are “getting longer in between:”
I am hoping that you’re running down the road to me without your shoes on
I am binding every part that is left of me to a tiny mustard seed, and it is growing
…
I am roaming, and you are calling me back home. I have never felt that call so strong before
and though my feet walk very slow, and there is death between my bones, I’ll make it home!
In the midst of the doubt, God is pursuing.
But the song that has struck me most is this one called “To Dust.” The last verse goes like this:
So even if my anger and my pain have all continued
it could quickly fade if I’d receive a touch from you
and I would be content to forget everything I’ve known
to fall asleep right now, for good before your throne
It’s a song that says that even if all of the anger and pain continues, just a touch from God would satisfy him. In this encounter with his “Teacher” (Jesus, I assume),
peaceful words came out and silenced all my silence
and I realized that the knowledge that I thought that I had known
was nothing compared to you coming to my home.”
The presence of Jesus coming to his home and into his brokenness is enough to silence the doubt and answer the questions, at least until “maybe when I’m dead, you will answer all the questions/that all of us explained though we knew we didn’t know them.”
In the midst of the doubt, there is Jesus.
But that’s enough of me blathering on about these songs. Take a listen for yourself! Both “The Doubting One,” “Broken Tether,” and “To Dust” are on this one, Ars Morendi.
a cup of kimitea 