What Are You Listening to?

You see, back in the Pandora days, I thought that I wasn't very interested in Skillet. But I guess tastes change and they also have new music ten years later that they didn't have back then. So I've been listening to their two latest albums a lot lately, but I also like to listen to the concert they did with Lacey Sturm because, you know, Lacey is great. 

In particular, I'm enjoying that performance of "Awake and Alive" (here's the link), which is not in fact on the albums I've been listening to and so it would have been around back in those Pandora days. Those lyrics "Right here, right now . . . I know what I believe inside, I'm awake and I'm alive." Death screams at the door as soon as we are born, and yet we live, we live because we are meant to be still alive, alive to the moment right here and right now in front of us. "In the dark . . . I feel you breathe into me, forever hold this heart that I will give to you, forever I will live for you." There is only One worth living for, only one capable of giving life, all else fails. Where does my strength come from? Where does my hope come from? 

While I have no desire to go to a Skillet concert (one of the reasons why I like going to the opera is because everyone sits nicely in their seats), I do like listening to music like this because I like such positive lyrics. I love all of the light in the dark, the fervent reaching upwards to the light out of black night. As I've said before, I hear the tone of a song more than its genre (although there are definitely genres I don't like, I won't pretend otherwise). So sometimes I find "loud" music like this more calming and strengthening than "quiet" music because it has more hope in it. Oh, yes, and side note, I also identify with how Lacey moves her hands and arms when she sings. 

To provide a second option from a different genre, though, I recently found Seacoast Worship's "You Are Here" (here's the Spotify link), which makes a good companion song to "Awake and Alive." Compare these lyrics: "Holding me when I feel hopeless, only you restore my soul." Or: "You are my comfort, you are my shelter, you are here, healing and power." To stand right here right now because of who walks beside me. Right here, right now. 

We are alive today for a reason. Yesterday has passed away and tomorrow has not yet come. We are right here, right now, in this moment, strong and capable in this moment.