“Awake, awake to love and work!” The opening line of this album captures a key aim of singing and the arts—to wake us out of our sleepy routines, to open us wide emotionally and mentally to God’s astonishing activity in and through his creation, to summon us to respond in our loving and our working.

Attending to reality, observing simply what is, can shatter our hazy assumptions and call us to rousing action. The reality we must attend to is the stuff of heaven and earth, spiritual and physical, lofty and low. To see, to truly see—how that can transform our vision of life! “See how the giant sun soars up! So let the love of Jesus come and set your soul ablaze.”

May the dance of text and music inspire and delight your imagination to see a bit more of the wonder of it all, the brokenness and the beauty, the territory of sin and salvation, the body and breath which are sheer gift. Such sight is possible only in the light of the Radiant Dawn, the Eternal Light, the Sun of Justice, the one who shines on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone. Alleluia!