Citizens

A THOUSAND SHORES – Citizens

/ Jason Henry / Leave a comment

“A Thousand Shores” (not Hallelujahs, Names, Tongues or Reasons. For real, I’m starting to get all of these “thousand” songs mixed up. 😂) is written by Leeland Mooring, Leslie Jordan, and Zachary Bolen. It ‘s part of Citizens’ 2023 album I Can’t Find the Edges of You, the home of certified banger “Good Ground,” which I love and have reviewed already.

While “Good Ground” and “Everything and More” were my initial favorites from this release, “A Thousand Shores” grew on me every time I heard it, and some of my fellow worship leaders agreed, so we introduced it at Christ’s Church a couple weeks ago. The band has really enjoyed it, and the congregation has grabbed ahold of it as well, but is “A Thousand Shores” biblical, and will it worship? Let’s figure out what we’ve been singing!

Focus

This song expresses the wonder and joy of being known by Jesus and filled with his life-sustaining love. The most repeated line and heartbeat of the song is “Jesus, You are my everything,” an expression of devotion to Jesus and a statement of his all-sufficiency.

This song is about the closeness of Jesus to the believer, so there’s lots of “my” in the song, and also lots of “You” referring to Jesus. Jesus is the only member of the Trinity mentioned specifically.

Lyric Analysis

VERSES 1 & 2
These verses express wonder at how deeply Jesus knows us and at the sovereign way he works in our lives. The author says God can read our hearts like a book, a sentiment the Eleven Disciples share in Acts 1:24, and that he knows what is in our minds before we ask it, an important principle Jesus teaches along with the Lord’s Prayer (Matt 6:8).

When this song says, “You write my story and call it good,” I think it’s paraphrasing Romans 8:28, which says “for those who love God, all things work together for good.” God is the author of our faith journey (Heb 12:2), and we can trust that his plans are good even as we are unable to imagine or comprehend his ways (Job 9:10, Isa 55:8). The phrase “You’re in my future, You’re in my past” reminds me of Psalm 139:13-16, where David praises God for knowing him and every one of his days even before he was formed in the womb.

As a response to this God’s wondrous knowledge of our inmost being and his unsearchable plans, we cry out with Moses, “Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Ex 15:11).

CHORUS
“You give my lungs the air to breathe // You are my everything”

In the chorus, we praise Jesus for things that he gives us. We’re not really talking about material blessings here; we’re more describing the experience of knowing Christ and walking with him. He gives light to our eyes (Pro 29:11), words to our lips (Matt 10:19), and breath to our lungs (Gen 2:7) as well putting a song in our soul (Zeph 3:17) and giving us every beat of our hearts. Jesus doesn’t just give us life when we’re born or when we become Christians, he sustains us by his power every moment, and the whole universe only holds together because of his active involvement (Col 1:17). “In him, we live and move and have our being.” (Ac 17:28) This is what we mean when we say, “You are my everything.”

I think it’s important to note that calling Jesus our everything does not dishonor the other Persons of the Trinity, devalue the community of the church, or denigrate our bodily and emotional needs. Regarding the Trinity, all of God fully receives all worship offered to Jesus. He is creator, sustainer, the head of the church, the beginning and the end, given preeminence in all things. The fullness of God is pleased to dwell in him (Col 1:15-20). The Father and Spirit are never threatened by honor given to Jesus but are fully included in it. The church is the very body of Christ, the fulness of his presence, the earthly epicenter of his all-in-all-ness (Eph 1:22-23). So participating in Christian community is part of what it means to have Jesus as our everything. Regarding physical needs, Christ promises that his Father provides for them when we seek after him (Matt 6:32-33). Trusting in Jesus as our everything means subordinating all those needs because we know that we need him more.

VERSE 3
This short verse is about the immensity and infinity of Jesus’ love. Much like the uncountable grains of sand on a thousand shores, the love of Christ can never run out. It is eternal, abounding, steadfast, forgiving, and perfect (1 Jn 4:18, John 3:16, Ps 136:26). I can’t imagine a greater truth than that either!

BRIDGE
The phrase “too wonderful” appears in the Bible when the speaker acknowledges that he can’t comprehend God’s power and wisdom and love. Job says this of God’s tremendous power in creating and sustaining the world, and of the way God has been active even through Job’s suffering (Job 42:3). David says it when praising God for how deeply and perfectly God knows each one of us (Ps 139:6). It conveys an inability to understand, but also a deep awe, reverence, and amazement.

If you are in Christ, you never have to worry about what life or eternity would be like without Jesus, because nothing can ever separate you from his love or rip you out of his hand (John 17:11-12, Rom 8:39). I’m not going to get into the once-saved-always-saved debate here; suffice it to say that the Bible warns us against falling away from Christ, but it also reassures us that nothing short of a full rejection of the Son of God can ever sever our relationship with him (Heb 6:4-6, 2 Tim 2:12-13).

Accessibility

While God’s ways and his love are incomprehensible, “A Thousand Shores” is not. It uses easy-to-understand language to describe and celebrate beautiful, biblical truths about God and his relationship to us. You don’t need a theology degree or a lifetime of accumulated Sunday school lessons to understand this one. 👍👍

I don’t see any danger of serious misunderstandings in this song. Some church people might think the song excludes the Father and Holy Spirit, or that it takes a particular stance on eternal security, but that’s just not the case, as I discussed above.

This song is highly congregational, as long as your congregation isn’t scared of a little syncopation! The melodies are highly repetitive, making them easy to learn, and the range is only a sixth! That’s super rare in contemporary worship songs and it means that just about anyone can find a comfortable place to sing this song whatever key you put it in.

Music

Simple, repetitive chord changes. Repetitive melody. Nothing insane going on rhythmically. The basic drum pattern of kick and snare is easy to grab onto. There’s lots of synth in this one, so I like to use a track for those arpeggiators and atmospheric effects. The only real challenge for the band is going to be the highly syncopated lyrics. It’s a little tricky to stay in time when the melody seems to avoid the beat.

The key to the dynamics of this song is contrast. The dramatic entrances and exits of different instruments, the octave jumps, the nearly yelled vocals on the bridge with almost no instrumentation, all of it makes this song exciting and easy to engage with.

I mentioned earlier that the range of this song is only a sixth. That’s not quite true for the lead vocalist. 😬 There is an octave jump from verse 3 to the chorus, so that makes the range for the lead singer an octave plus a sixth. Yikes! Fortunately, this is easily fixed by just not singing the first part of the song an octave lower, or having a singer of the opposite sex sing that portion. I’ve found that if I include the octave jump, it is helpful to have another man continue singing the melody an octave lower to give the men in the congregation an anchor so they don’t have to jump up high with me.

Conclusions

Will it worship? Totally. “A Thousand Shores” revels in the mysteries of Jesus: his love, his deep knowing, his life-giving presence. It is an exuberant anthem of joy and devotion, and I plan to keep on singing it!

Image by Mitchell Shwartz on Unsplash

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one half of any book of the ESV Bible.

GOOD GROUND – Citizens

/ Jason Henry / 1 Comment

“Good Ground” is an agricultural synth-worship single from the brand new Citizens album, I Can’t Find the Edges of You. It’s the song that first jumped out at me upon listening through the album, and I love its unique way of inviting God’s Word into our hearts and offering ourselves to him in devotion. I love Citizens (I played “You Brought Me Back to Life” to death in 2014-15), and I love Justin Tweito (see my review on “The Cup Was Not Removed“), so imagine my delight and surprise when I discovered that Zach Bolen and Justin Tweito cowrote this song!

Let’s put our soil judging skills to good use and ask if “Good Ground” will worship.

Focus

This song is a prayer asking God to speak to us, change us, and motivate us by his Word. It’s a song of devotion offering our hearts and lives to him as good ground to bear the kind of fruit he wants to produce in us.

Since the words are addressed to God, we mostly call him “You.” He’s never named specifically except when the chorus calls God “Heaven” in a lovely example of metonymy.

Lyric Analysis

VERSE
There is only one verse to this song, and in it we offer God our ears, eyes, hands, and feet.

In the first two lines, we ask him to give us the kind of ears that will hear his words and the kind of eyes that can see him working. This idea is found in Isaiah 6:10, where God connects eyes that see and ears that hear to a heart that understands and turns to God and finds healing. Jesus quotes this passage after teaching the Parable of the Sower, praising his disciples for their willingness to see and hear his meaning (Matt. 13:13-15). Paul quotes the same verse at the end of Acts, rebuking the Jews of Rome for refusing to see and hear the truth about Jesus (Acts 28:24-28). So when we sing these lines, we are asking God to give us the right kind of heart to understand his Word.

In the next two lines, we offer our hands and feet to God’s service. We acknowledge that he made our hands so that our actions can glorify him. In offering our feet, we are asking him to send us out with his Word to communicate it to others, whether to lost people who need to hear the Gospel for the first time or to our brothers and sisters who need to grow and be encouraged by God’s Word. This line calls to mind Isaiah 52:7, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news…who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.'”

CHORUS
“Fall on good ground, good ground // We don’t want to waste Your Word”

The chorus of “Good Ground” is based on the Parable of the Sower found in Matthew 13:1-23. The song imagines us as the soil from the parable and asks God to make us into the kind of good soil that is soft for receiving the seeds of his word and produces much fruit in response.

“A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.”

Matthew 13:3-9

Jesus goes on to explain the meaning of this parable, a rarity in his recorded ministry. He tells us that the seeds are the “word of the kingdom,” (Mt. 13:19) a good reminder that the Gospel is not just the good news that we get to go to heaven when we die because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, but also the good news that we get to be a part of building his kingdom here and now. He explains that the path, rocky ground, and thorny ground represent those who either do not receive the word, or receive it but do not grow in it and act on it. In contrast, those who do receive the word and understand it, the good soil, always bear fruit many times what was sown (Mt. 13:18-23).

In asking for God to bring rain to make the seeds grow, we recognize that we need his help to understand his word and bear kingdom-fruit from it. In asking him to let our hearts be soft (like the good soil) to receive his word, we recognize that we are stubborn and need his help to listen and change.

BRIDGE
Like the chorus, the bridge is a prayer based on the Parable of the Sower. We ask for his words take root in our hearts, unlike those in the parable who did not understand or who let life’s worries quickly dry up their passion for Jesus and his kingdom. Plants with deep roots are healthy and can outlast changing weather. We also ask that his words would bear lots of fruit in our lives. Part of that fruit is letting the Good News of Jesus and his kingdom grow and spill out from our lives and mouths onto others.

The bridge also references one of the I Am statements of Jesus. In John 15:1-8, he calls himself the true vine. In a teaching very similar to the Parable of the Sower, Jesus tells his followers that they are branches connects to his vine and that as long as they remain in him, made clean by the power of his word, they will bear much fruit.

Accessibility

Much like the Parable of the Sower, this song explains itself. We get a few lines of metaphor, and then a line that clarifies what we’re talking about for anyone who hasn’t caught on already. I admire how the authors have employed rich biblical symbolism to express Jesus’ parable in song without obscuring the meaning or expecting people to have a wealth of scriptural knowledge to draw upon first. The chorus is very clear that the rain we’re asking for is the nourishment of God’s word implanted in our hearts, so I don’t see much potential for misunderstanding it as a request for some other kind of blessings.

The melody of this song falls entirely within an octave and mostly within the range of a fifth, so it’s very accessible from that angle. The lines of the verse all have the same melodic line, so that’s easy to learn. The melody of the chorus is trickier, but it gives the congregation key repetitive phrases like “good ground, good ground” that make excellent entry points. The bridge is short and somewhat repetitive, so some people will chime in on the second half, but there’s not much time to learn it fully. Overall, I think this song is challenging but singable for most congregations.

Music

“Good Ground” uses contrast really well. The quiet parts of the song contrast dramatically with the loud, and the a capella portions are juxtaposed with the highly accompanied portions. I think what is played matters less on this song and how much is played matters more.

I’ll be honest, I’m still figuring out how to play this one with my worship team. The recording is very arpeggiator-driven, and half the song relies on an ambient soundscape rather than a band groove. I’m definitely going to have to lean into the creativity of my musicians on this one, and it will be a challenge adapting some of the electronic beats into something real to play. There may also be some parts of the song where we don’t play and just let the multitrack carry the instrumentation. If you’re going to introduce this song to your church, expect to spend more time than usual working with the band on what each instrument is going to do.

Conclusions

Will it worship? For sure.

The main challenge with “Good Ground” is going to be adapting it for a church worship band, but I think the congregation will grab ahold of these unique lyrics and sing them with their hearts. Especially here in the Midwest, a good agricultural metaphor will go a long way! I’m confident this song will prime the minds, hearts, and hands of our people to hear, understand, and follow God’s Word.


Image by Majharul Islam from Unsplash

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. May not copy or download more than 500 consecutive verses of the ESV Bible or more than one half of any book of the ESV Bible.