The image of current Christian music as an endless stream of poorly rhymed clichéd praise is mercifully shattered by the husband and wife duo Bringing Home’s sobering new video for their song “To the Ones.” In lieu of the usual closed eyes and open arms while standing in a field humdrum, the video hits on themes of aging, grief, loneliness, and prayer’s power not residing in our telling God what He already knows but instead in how it allows Him to directly communicate with us, ofttimes with a message demanding immediate action on our part.

The song’s lyrics tackle the risky path of speaking in Christ’s voice to His people. In lesser hands, this can quickly become a pseudo-Scriptural quagmire, but Amber and Jared Russell, who form Bringing Home, do a superb job of handling the assignment.

The Russells describe the song as, “(A) cry from the Father’s heart declaring to us, ‘I see You.’” They add:

“We, as humans, have all faced hardships at different times in our lives, and we’re all in need of saving. When no one else understands, and life is more than we can bear, our prayer is that God will remind you that He has never left your side. He came in pursuit of you. He can break the chains that keep us shackled and restore hope to those who have none.”

What takes the song far above the norm is how it embraces the usually taboo subject of Christians facing matters such as grief and loneliness, things for which they are typically scolded and accused of lacking faith should they confess to at least some fellow believers. The saying “only Christians kill their wounded” has sadly more basis in truth than many of us who believe in Jesus ofttimes care to admit. This is powerfully brought out in the video, where an elderly pastor successfully preaches the Gospel to his congregation without letting on to his inner agony brought about by his wife’s passing.

The song contains this passage:

To the ones with hurt and guilt and pain
Whose hope is lost and stripped away
To the ones I love cry out to Me
I gave My life to set you free

Says it quite well, doesn’t it?

The church’s purpose has never been to house the always triumphant. As Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” The church should always be where the broken are welcome by their fellow members of the unfortunate fellowship. Faith in Christ is not a panacea protecting believers from all heartache. Bad things do happen to good people. We will have pain. We will know suffering. This is why we relate to Jesus, Who, although God, was a “Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” We understand there is a cost to living in a fallen world. We also know the great and glorious day will come, when the words “(a)nd God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away” will be fulfilled. It doesn’t mean there will be no tears between now and then, as I well know. We sometimes forget that even Jesus wept. If grief was worthy of God, who are we to dismiss it?

As the song says:

This goes out to the broken ones, the lonely ones, the hurting ones
This goes out to the hopeless ones, the desperate ones, the ones who’ve gone away
In the night I see you crying out, I’ll never walk away
From the broken ones, the lonely ones, the hurting ones

Let us do the same for others and especially for ourselves.