TO THE KINDNESS OF GOD: An Album Review (Introduction)

This is the first in a series of blog posts where I will review Michael Card's new album, To the Kindness of God. Today, I will introduce the album. Stay tuned for more posts in days to come...

It was with high expectation and emotion that I began my first listen-through of Michael Card’s latest record, To the Kindness of God…

I discovered the music of Michael Card when I was six years old. It was on my father’s CD rack, a compilation album called Joy in the Journey. I remember listening through that CD and being enchanted by the songs. It was the beginning of my adventure with this awestruck troubadour, encountering with him the wonders of God’s Word. Michael has a gift for songwriting: a unique way of weaving the truth and beauty of Scripture into a song. But Michael has given us more than individual songs. He has given us albums; a discography covering nearly the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments. Concept albums, in which the songs are able to tell a greater story collectively, than each could on its own. The beauty of a concept album is that it can approach the subject organically, from multiple angles, taking time to explore and develop an idea.

So why was this particular concept album such a big deal for me? Word has it that To the Kindness of God may be Michael Card’s last album. Listening through it felt like a goodbye of sorts. But if this is Michael’s last album, it definitely makes for a grand end to an era. There is grandness in its soft yet sweeping musical landscape, and in its lyrical theme, hesed: an untranslatable word denoting the inexpressible kindness of God. A theme that spans all of Scripture and in fact, all of history.

A word on hesed (kheh'·sed): it appears in the Hebrew Scriptures nearly 250 times, mostly in the Psalms. In English it’s often translated mercy or lovingkindness, yet these words fall short. King David, in Psalm 23, described hesed as a mercy that would follow him all the days of his life. A mercy that would never let go. Hesed is used in Psalm 136 in the recounting of Israel’s exodus. The phrase “His love endures forever” is chanted over and over again. The Christian Standard Bible translates hesed in that passage as faithful love. Elsewhere, I’ve also seen loyal love.

In To the Kindness of God, the listener is drawn, song by song, into the glorious story of hesed: how God’s matchless might has been revealed in his transformative, covenant love toward his broken creation. Can there be a more epic theme on which to write an album?

1. Come as You Are
2. Hymn to the Kindness of God
3. The Shelter of the Shadow
4. That Kind of Love
5. When Dinah Held My Hand / Jesus Is on the Mainline
6. Gomer’s Song
7. This Is My Father’s World
8. I Will Be Kind
9. Why Not Change the World

(To be continued...)