A Collision (3+4=7) | David Crowder* Band

    A Collision (or 3+4=7)  |  David Crowder* Band

release date:  2005    

    record label:  sixstepsrecords

track
 listing:     1) Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven
                     (A Walk Downstairs)

                 2) Come and Listen

                 3) Here is our King

                 4) Wholly Yours

                 5) Foreverandever Etc …

                 6) (A Quiet Interlude)

                 7) A Beautiful Collision

                 8) Soon I Will Be Done with the
                     Troubles of the World

                 9) Be Lifted or Hope Rising

                 10) I Saw the Light

                 11) O God Where Are You Now
                       (In Pickerel Lake? Pigeon?
                         Marquette? Mackinaw?)

                 12) (B Quiet Interlude)

                 13) Do Not Move

                 14) Come Awake

                 15) You are my Joy

                 16) Our Happy Home

                 17) (Repeat / Return) or When the
                      Seventh Angel Sounded His Trumpet,
                      and There Were Loud Voices in Heaven,
                      Which Said: “The Kingdom of the World
                      Has Become the Kingdom of Our Lord
                      and of His Christ, and He Will Reign
                      Foreverandever, Etc …”

                 18) We Win!

                 19) Rescue is Coming
                        (B Walk Downstairs)

                 20) A Conversation

                 21) The Lark Ascending
                         (Perhaps, More Accurately, I’m
                          Trying to Make You Sing)

                

“You and I collide…”

I want to go on record saying that the David Crowder* Band is one of only a handful of Christian music artists who I perceive to be exactly that:  artists.  When everything on Christian radio sounds like it was cast in the mold of popular music with a touch of Jesus sprinkled on top, it’s refreshing to recognize an artist moving in the other direction. One who takes risks (like creating a record with twenty-one tracks), writes songs that aren’t destined for radio play (like Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven or my personal favorite, The Lark Ascending) and isn’t scared to incorporate work from other artists, even if they aren’t on a “Christian” record label (Sufjan Steven’s O God Where Are You Now?).  Crowder has become an inspiring songwriter while remaining willing to challenge the boundaries of what it means to make “worship” music.  David Crowder will never fit into the cookie-cutter outline of most Christian musicians; mostly because his beard is too long for that. 

If you have followed his music for any length of time, or read either of his two magnificent books, then you know that that Crowder is quite a character; perhaps eccentric is the best word.  Knowing this I didn’t give much thought to the title of this album, A Collision (or 3+4=7), when I received it for Christmas about five years ago.  But last night, as I sat listening to this album again, it was as if my eyes were opened for the first time.  Unexpectedly and suddenly, I was seeing a message in a simple math equation.  Perhaps it was because I was finally in a place where I could really listen.

I can think of no other word in the English language which creates such a disparity of emotions as “Revelation:” as soon as it is spoken, one of two things has occurred to everyone within a hearing radius of your voice.  Either you have their attention and will be able to hold them in the palm of your hand or they have checked out and will no longer hear anything else you may say.  Believe me, I led a bible study on the apocalyptic visions of John last year; nothing created more positive comments and negative controversy as that eight-week study.  One thing I learned while studying Revelation was that numbers do not always hold value; in fact, numbers in the Bible are oftentimes used to represent an idea or a reality.  The numbers in the book of Revelation are more like letters.  For instance, we relate the letter “A” with a good grade and positive outcomes, while the letter “F” represents quite the opposite.  Likewise, if we see a sign with the letter “P” and an arrow, we can surmise that there is parking available in that direction.  When we understand the symbolism behind the numbers found in the equation 3+4=7, then the title of this album will take on a dramatically different meaning.  In fact, we may realize that not only this album, but on a larger scale our entire lives, are nothing more than a dramatization of that simple equation:  3+4=7.

In the Biblical book of Revelation the number three represents holiness and perfection and, ultimately, the Godhead – The Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which exist as three, and at the same time, as one.  The number four represents the natural realm, the created world, and includes God’s most significant creation:  mankind.  Finally, the number seven represents completeness – truth and beauty that can only be found in God himself.  I find it humbling that the nature of our God is reflected not only in the beauty of His creation but also in a simple mathematical equation.  When the Godhead collides with the natural world then, and only then, can a perfect completeness be achieved; only then will three plus four actually equal seven.    

Our very lives are to be as simple as that equation, but reality sets in.  Most of the time they are not; we get lost, we forget, we fall down.  Knowing this, David Crowder crafted A Collision as a reminder of that profound addition equation.  Listening to the entire album one moves through the equation:  from songs surrounding the holiness of God, to anthems about the human condition, to a culmination, ironically, of seven songs reveling in the completeness that can only be found in the arms of our God.

The album starts with Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, a recording that sounds as ancient as the equation that it introduces to the listener.  The next four songs that follow are quintessential Crowder worship songs:  Come and Listen, Here is our King, Wholly Yours and Foreverandever.  Each one can stand on its own feet as an outstanding expression of worship, but when experienced as a part of the entire album, these songs come to represent the number three.  They remind the listener of the holiness, the set-apartness, of our God.  These songs proclaim Christ as “our King” and “the antonym of me.”  Foreverandever uses a seemingly endless chorus to describe, not a believer’s commitment to his Savior, but to reflect upon the security of God.  The fact that “I am yours forever and ever and ever and ever” has nothing to do with who I am – in fact, it has much more to do with who God is.  Come and Listen urges the listener to “Praise our God, for He is good… come and listen to what He’s done.”  Because God withheld nothing, including His own Son, to secure the redemption of his creation, He can be considered nothing less than eternally good.  I am tempted to evaluate God’s goodness based upon what He is personally working in my life but that line of thinking is dangerously shortsighted.  Even if God never personally touched my life, He would still be good; the sacrifice of Christ shows this.  But our God goes beyond good – the fact that He reaches down and touches humanity, even now, makes His benevolence more than we could ever comprehend.  God loves every one of His people to the same degree (He sent Christ for each of them) but He doesn’t fail to love them as individuals as well, working in each of our lives in His own mysterious ways.  We serve a God that isn’t afraid to work us into His equation; that is nothing short of a miracle.

The choruses concerning God’s holiness, the “number three” songs, are separated from the rest of the album by (A Quiet Interlude), a forty-eight second instrumental meant to create space in this equation.  If there is a thesis statement to this album, then it’s the next track, A Beautiful Collision.  I think of this song as the addition sign in the equation 3+4=7.  Crowder sings “here it comes, a beautiful collision, is happening now, there’s seems no end to where You begin and there I am now… You and I collide…”  No song sums up the collective experience of humanity with its Creator better than that; a collision we could not see coming, but which can be described as nothing short of beautiful.      

Soon I Will Be Done With the Troubles of the World cues the start of the next part of the equation:  the songs representing the number four, each concerned with the human condition.  The world is dark and left to our own devices humanity would remain that way:  lost, groping for answers but finding none.  Be Lifted or Hope Rising asks God a question that plagues every believer, “how long till you hear us… till you mend us… till you come back?”  What song says more about our depravity than the bluegrass standard I Saw the Light?  “I wandered so aimless life filled with sin, I wouldn’t let my dear Savior in...I walked in darkness, clouds covered me, I had no idea where the way out would be.”  Crowder, echoing something every human has felt, asks O God Where Are You Now?  Luckily, we serve a God who is not content to leave His creation hopeless.  Praise God that the equation does not end with the number four.         

“Be more quiet now and wait…” Crowder sings over and over as the music builds to a crescendo in (B Quiet Interlude), another track which creates space in the album, while at the same time, reflecting a profound truth.  In the equation of life, 3+4=7, the fact that the three comes first is not by accident.  Even just a cursory glance at the equation allows one to see that the three is adding itself to the four, and not the other way around.  The Godhead brought salvation to humanity; there was nothing that mankind could do to earn that grace or speed up the timing of God.  It is humbling to know that hundreds of Old Testament heroes lived their lives without tasting the sweetness of God’s promised salvation through Christ; it can only be God’s grace which has allowed me to be born into a time in which Christ’s sacrifice is fully known.  I have to believe that nothing happens by accident.

Near the end of Do Not Move, Crowder sings of “the costliest of costs, the deadliest of loss, the wonder of the cross” and then begins to repeat that phrase, “the wonder of the cross” through the remainder of the song.  If 3+4=7 is the equation of our lives and describes our interaction with God then the equal sign, the portion of the equation that secures the addition of three and four, must be the cross.  Before the cross God was involved with His people but in an almost indirect way; prophets were His voice and priests His hands.  The Holy of Holies, the innermost room of the temple where God dwelled, was only accessible to one man – the high priest.  But at the death of Christ the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was torn in two.  The holiness of God was “set free” to invade His people that we might, through Christ, finally and irrevocably, as the next song on the album describes, Come Awake!  The imagery of what it means to be caught up in this beautiful collision of three and four reaches new heights in this next song.  Crowder begs “from sleep arise, you were dead, become alive… wake up, wake up, open your eyes, climb from your grave into the light.” 

When three meets four, seven is produced; when the Godhead comes crashing to the created world the result is holy completion.  The final seven songs of A Collision look, with hope, forward to that day when the troubles of this world are swallowed by the all-surpassing presence of Christ; to the day when God’s children find themselves complete in the eternal presence of their Savior and all is made new.  The title of the seventeenth track of A Collision, borrowed from Revelation 11:15, alludes to this day “when the kingdom of the world [will] become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.”  On that day all of God’s children can echo the words of You Are My Joy and as Our Happy Home proclaims, we will make our home in the New Jerusalem where “the weak shall dwell in endless peace and never hunger more” and where “Christ Himself is King.”  Even now, though, we look forward to the completion of the equation proclaiming, as Crowder’s songs do, that “we have already won” and that “rescue is coming.”    

The final two songs of A Collision, A Conversation and The Lark Ascending, are actually just one track.  A Conversation starts as David Crowder is presumably being interviewed by a radio DJ about his new album; the conversation proceeds awkwardly until the DJ references the picture of an atom on the album cover, asking if it is metaphorical.  Crowder responds “yeah… it’s a symbol… you see that and think atom.  It shows electrons moving in elliptical paths around a nucleus [but] we know that’s not how an atom works… or even looks for that matter.”  The DJ doesn’t quite comprehend the metaphor and asks Crowder to connect the dots.  He continues “what we mean to say is that the elements of worship are inadequate, much like the atom description.  But this is what we have, you know?  It helps us carry the idea.”  The track changes into The Lark Ascending with the conversation still going on – slowly the music builds and the song overtakes the interview.  The last words of the album find Crowder admitting that “I’m trying to make you feel that this is for real, that life is happening… I’m just trying to make you sing.” 

Like the metaphor of the atom, the equation 3+4=7 isn’t perfect, but, as Crowder says, “its what we have… [and] it helps us carry the idea.”  What idea is that? The understanding that we are broken and will only find ourselves truly made complete when our lives are invaded by the Messiah.  Crowder admits that he is only trying to make us sing.  Why?  Because through singing these songs we experience the holiness of the Godhead, come face-to-face with the human condition and find ourselves looking forward to the completion, the end of the story that is surely coming.  Perhaps through singing a few songs we can finally recognize that our God is not only the answer to the equation of our lives, but He is also the hand doing the addition.  When our depravity meets God’s divinity, it is truly nothing less than a beautiful collision.  Praise God that three plus four can never equal anything but seven.