Books about songs are about as good as songs about books. That’s what I thought when introduced to the idea of writing 10,000 Reasons: Stories of Faith, Hope, and Thankfulness Inspired by the Worship Anthem.
I wasn’t sure how you could take three minutes of a highly personal, emotional experience and hope to find enough magic to grow it into four or five hours’ worth of material. And what’s the maximum reader tolerance for a detailed description of the redrafting of verse and chorus? One page? Five? Surely no more than ten, right?
Most of all, though, I thought it was a lame idea because I couldn’t see how people describing the impact of a song could be anything other than incredibly boring.
Turns out I’m an idiot.
10,000 Reasons has connected on a deep, deep level. As a result it has found itself acting as soundtrack to some truly remarkable people who have found themselves in some truly remarkable situations.
Like Mollie, who has the most aggressive form of leukemia there is. The doctors told her that she was 90% affected and that when she first showed up at the hospital she didn’t have much time left. They said she was walking death. Yet she has fought with nothing less than pure courage and cast-iron faith. Her hospital room is covered with Scripture, her life an example of what it means to trust God, ‘whatever may pass, and whatever lies before me.’
Or Myu, a man sentenced to death by an Indonesian court for smuggling drugs. The years in prison and repeated failed attempts to get the death sentenced lifted had not left Myu cynical, nor had they bled any of the life from his faith. On the contrary, he had found God to be the only source of goodness he could rely on. In the moments before he faced the firing squad he offered his forgiveness and called down God’s blessings on the people and the country that was about to kill him. He died while singing of the richness of God’s love.
And then there’s the songwriter himself. He didn’t have much luck with fathers, and childhood handed out more pain than most of us would expect to handle in a lifetime, but Matt found that when he sang his worship to God, his perspective changed. As he turned his eyes to his Father, he began to see a bolder, brighter story being written.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It many ways it is, just like the song itself. This book doesn’t offer any foolproof formula or radical new concepts. But maybe, just maybe, it’ll lead just a few people towards a bolder, brighter story that God invites them into.
In fact, there’s no maybe about it. This book can inspire a little more faith, it can ignite a little more thanks, and it can draw out a little more courage and confidence when the storms start to rage. After all, it has for me…
To find out more about the book visit Amazon.com