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| God Of Wrath |
Date Posted:
2/12/2002
Author:
David Crowder
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God of Wrath was written trying to capture a full picture of our God whom we give our hearts and lives to. Do not His wrath and His love come from the same hand? Is He not unchanging? To surrender all we are to all He is; this is the place freedom and life is found. That is where the heart breaks into dancing and our lives beat full of joy. Salvation has truly come. Musically and lyrically trying to marry opposite emotions, with dark ominous verses and then a chorus that lifts into a spreading, embracing response to this fuller picture of who He is, reaching an ultimate confession of whole of life surrender, “…blood through my veins is for You” until culminating in a joyous whirling dance caught up in the beauty of this tension. This God, beyond comprehension who holds night and day, earth and sky, death and life, has come down and embraced humanity and the only thing we have to offer is ourselves. And He gladly accepts.
Jeremiah 10:10-11
Psalm 7:11
Nahum 1:2-3
Hosea 11:9-10
Romans 3:5-6
Deuteronomy 3:24
Deuteronomy 32:3
1 Chronicles 29:11
Psalm 145:3
Psalm 150:2
Ezekiel 38:23
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Have you ever walked into a gothic cathedral? I grew up protestant evangelical in east Texas. While pick up trucks were plenty, there weren’t many gothic cathedrals around. In truth, the first time I stepped foot into one it was 1998 in Paris France and I had no idea what sensory stimulation awaited me. We walked through these huge, ancient, wooden doors that looked older than time and then...
“Oh my”.
“How?”
“Who?”
“I didn’t know this was possible.”
“This is how old?”
“Was the hammer even around at that point?”
Here they built to resize you upon entrance. They forced your gaze upwards. They surrounded you with beauty that astonishes and creates the wonder of the impossible before your eyes. Here I am lost in massive stained glass windows reaching towards heaven and telling stories on their ascent…walls seeming to stretch up away from me arching to meet growing pillars forming a stone canopy far overhead…an amazingly ornate altar, unapproachable except for a few…a pulpit elevated above the congregants, even above the lectern for the reading of Scripture, from a place above humanity…Candles aglow with prayers rising from dancing flames, as saints and angels frozen in marble flight look on…I have one predominant feeling standing in the middle of this; He is big-I am small.
I think my generation has missed this. I believe we have a great concept of the immanent God…Jesus…Friend…Lover of my soul…My romancer. But this feeling of unattainable transcendence is something new. Back home in America the trend is to build churches to look more like office complexes. Accessible. Very un-intimidating. I don’t know if this is a terrible place to be found but is it the total picture of rescue? We surely are rescued from ourselves, from our sin but are we also not rescued from the justice of this Holy God. God is love, yes, but if He is also unchanging then He is still vengeful and His vengeance for justice must somehow be an extension of that love. I think if we could embrace this greater picture of ‘holiness come near’ Christ’s rescue would be sweeter and our surrender deeper. Grace may even become a bit unnerving. That He would rescue us and keep rescuing us demands a fuller response than what I find in myself too often.
I want to build cathedrals. I want to use words and notes rather than stone and mortar. I want to write songs that help us gain perspective and say corporately that this God we pursue and who pursues us is so massive that it sometimes makes our heads swim. We are sometimes uncomfortable approaching and surely are resized in our pursuit to do so.
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