Pastor’s Blog

Through a series of circumstances I recently latched on to an album called ‘The Ill Tempered Klavier’ by singer/songwriter Ben Shive. Ben has worked with Andrew Peterson, one of my favorite artists, and that was part of what led me to this album.

As happens to me too rarely, I was totally blown away by the whole album. I have listened to it over and over and virtually memorized all the songs.

As a service to the internet community, I’m planning to blog the words, as best I can decipher them, to the whole album. I want to start with the song that first grabbed me, “Rise Up”.

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Rise Up, by Ben Shive

Every stone that makes you stumble,
and cuts you when you fall;
every serpent here that strikes your heel,
to curse you when you crawl,
the king of love one day will crush them all.

And every sad seduction
and every clever lie,
every word that woos and wounds
the pilgrim children of the sky,
the king of love will break them by and by.

And you will rise up in the end.
You will rise up in the end.
I know the night is cruel, but the day is coming soon
when you will rise up in the end.

If the thief had come to plunder
when the children were alone,
If he ravaged every daughter
and murdered every son,
Would not their father see this?
Would not his anger burn?
And would he not repay the tyrant
in the day of his return?
Await, await the day of his return.

Cause he will rise up in the end.
He will rise up in the end.
I know you need a savior. He is patient in his anger.
But he will rise up in the end.

And when the stars come crashing to the sea.
The high and mighty fall down on their knees.
When you see the Son descending in the sky.
The chains of death will fall around your feet.

You will rise up in the end.
You will rise up in the end.
You will rise up in the end.

I recently re-uploaded the Bridge Illustration in a slightly higher quality format.  Note that you have to push the HQ button once the video starts to see the higher quality version.

A couple of you asked about my brief reference to an astronomical explanation for the Star of Bethlehem. The website I mentioned is here.  In my opinion there are two key issues, both discussed by Rick Larson: (1) the date of death for Herod, which has usually been taken as 4 BC, but is argued at the website to be 1 AD.  Another web page that independently makes the same argument can be viewed here. (2) how certain star / planet conjunctions would be viewed by ancient astrologers.  That, in my opinion, is the weak point of this argument: the conjunctions postulated are not obviously significant unless they were something ancient astronomers would be particularly interested in.

As a last item from the Christmas series, I have posted the “O Little Town of Bethlehem” video on YouTube:

As always, comments welcome!

I have slightly tweaked the Bridge Illustration that I used for children’s corner on June 22nd and put it online in several places (Youtube, Godtube, and hopefully Google video if I can get it to upload).  I’m hoping to add a bit more animation to it as computer time permits. Comments welcome!

The Bridge to Life