As with pretty much every release of his, we purchased Steven Curtis Chapman‘s latest album, Beauty Will Rise, the day that it was first available to do so. We love his music, so there was no question we would purchase it at some point, but this project was different.

On May 21st, 2008, the Chapmans lost their then 5-year-old daughter, Maria in an accident on their own property. Horribly sad event, compounded by the fact that her brother was driving the car that took her life. (I wrote about it here the day after it happened.) An unthinkable series of events that obviously changed their lives forever.

Now a year and a half later, the title song of this collection says it all: Beauty will rise. (From Isaiah 61:3.)

From his blog, and his Facebook fan page, Steven has been sharing a lot of the backstory of the songs and the album. The songs (as always) do a good job of telling the story themselves.

Even if you have never experienced a similar tragedy, I am almost certain that everyone has wondered “where were you God?” on an occasion or two… or more. These songs are real, “raw” (is what Steven called them), honest … and incredibly hopeful. I think every comment or review I’ve seen has mentioned tears flowing when listening to the songs for the first time. It’s hard not to, yet somehow, they are hopeful tears.

I think that is what God does best. He is with us through the hardest stuff. And somehow brings greatness—beauty—from the ruin—the ashes.

He knows the way to wherever you are,
He knows the way to the depths of your heart.
He knows the way ’cause he’s already been where you’re going.
Jesus will meet you there.

I really like the third line of that chorus (from the song Jesus Will Meet You There) because it reminds me of the bigger picture perspective. No matter what happens, we will continue to move forward, and Jesus knows where we’re going. And he’ll bring and meet us there.

Nothing will bring back their daughter, but they have the hope that one day they will see her again. (Another great song from the album, “See”.) Meanwhile, they know Jesus is going with them through the loss—which Steven likened to an amputation, and coping with that, adjusting to that as being how they are “healing”.

If you have $10 or so… my opinion is, it couldn’t be more well spent.

Come As You Are
Today’s song – the final song in this 7-day celebration of the 7-year anniversary of the album – is the title track, Come As You Are. If you have been following along all week, you may see the reason we chose this song as the title song for the album. Most of the 13 tracks on it remind us of God’s unending grace and love for us. How he invites us to Come As (we) Are, not who we will be. It’s truly the “good news” that Jesus brought, and we still live in today.

I wrote the song for both piano and guitar, but perhaps mainly piano. The song is sung from the voice of God, until the middle section where we sing back to him “I am not worthy of the cross! I am not worthy of your love!” How can we, who are so often selfish and so often just messed up … how can we be the object of his affection? But, “as dearly loved children” … we are. And the middle section resolves back to our Father singing to us, “Come as you are, I want to be – so near to your heart just call on me. I will never desert you, in my arms I will shield you from all harm… come as you are.”

LISTEN HERE (for RSS feed only) | lyrics @ basicmm.com

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With this being the 7th anniversary week of the release of Come As You Are, I am highlighting some of the songs we liked best from the album. All week I’ll post a song (via the magic of Grooveshark.com) that you can listen to, and a link to purchase the song or album from iTunes or us. You don’t have to buy it… since you can just listen to the whole thing right here at GregsHead.net … but if you don’t have the album, we have a bunch of CDs sitting in boxes that would be better off sitting in your music player of choice. 🙂