Resplendent

From time to time, I have posted music videos on this blog. Some of you might wish for a few less of those, but I'll tell you why I do it: Music is perhaps the most powerful and influential tool ever.

Songs take the best of the written word, then put a sound to it. It is the reason movies have soundtracks, the reason TV shows play music as scenes build to a climax, the reason the Bible has angels singing around God's throne. Music allows us to convey emotions and feelings in ways simply speaking or writing words cannot.

Today's featured video comes courtesy of one of the best, Bill Mallonee. Some of you reading this will say, "Bill who?" But if I tell you he is the driving force and vocalist of Vigilantes of Love, you'll know who I mean.

This song (lyrics below) is entitled, "Resplendent", from the excellent Audible Sigh album circa 2000. It features country superstar Emmylou Harris on vocals, and captures the best of Bill's work. In the story of a Dust Bowl-era family, he contrasts the creation of God with the fallen world resulting from sin, and the existence of that same contrast in ourselves. We are made in the image of God, but our selfish nature is quick to compromise and betray.

I remember the dark clouds raining dust for days on end
Blew all the Earth out to California
Just left us here with the wind
Desperate times, you know everybody's part
It's your own lines you'd like to forget
Till what you were meets what you've now become
And grins and says Hey, haven't we met

Lost my first born that Winter
My wife on the first day of Spring
So I poured my sweat to the Earth
to see what that harvest would bring
And I remember how the fury
just like a plague of locusts
Egypt's punishment for sins of pride
Is that now what has come over us

How much of this was meant to be
How much the work of the Devil
How far can one man's eyes really see
In these days of toil and trouble

Honey, we're all resplendent,
Yeah honey, we are all thrift store
Like a wine-o with a $20 bill
Yeah, forever and eternally yours

And I can make you promises
If you don't expect too much,
Yes, and I will run the distance
If you'll please, please excuse my crutch

How much of this was meant to be
How much the work of the Devil
How far can one man's eyes really see
In these days of toil and trouble
How much of this is failing flesh
How much a course of retribution
My, my, how loudly we plead our innocence
Long after we made our contribution