An Experience of Holy

Finding Healing, Beauty, and Hope Amidst Wreckage

One of my all-time favorite bands is Sigur Rós. You likely may have never heard of them, but for the last twenty years, this Icelandic group has released the most profoundly beautiful, heavenly, and, dare I say, holy music on earth. After a ten-year hiatus, the band just released their eighth album entitled Átta. Last week, they also released a video for their song Andrá (Moment). I implore you to put on some headphones (please put on headphones) and spend eight minutes watching this emotionally moving video.

There are thin spaces between us and something outside of ourselves, something profoundly holy. In those moments, we transcend ourselves, our circumstances and access a love that resonates at the soul level. Words falter, unable to capture the depth of the experience. This encounter with the holy serves as a healing salve for our pain, sadness, anxiety, distress, and suffering. It brings to mind the words I penned in my 2018 book, Beauty in the Wreckage.

So while we hold together the tension of smiles and tears, the tension of joy and pain, the tension of celebration and mourning, the tension of happiness and sadness, the tension of life and death, we are still, even now, being wholly embraced, completely enveloped, unceasingly pursued, and graciously invited into the perfect love and shalom of God through it all.

You may find that incredibly hard to fathom, but listen. Despite the wreckage around us, there is another reality surrounding us, immersing us, in unending life and beauty. It is a reality that longs to revive our broken and wounded hearts so that they may beat again. It is a reality that washes over our blinded eyes so that we may see again. It is a reality that is overflowing and abundant in an ever-present completeness, wholeness, and harmony in all things. It is a reality that straightens every path, that stands against and presses into the dark, hostile, and oppressive forces of the world, and extends justice and righteousness for all people.

We live in a world that explodes with great artistry and creativity. It is a world that offers limitless freedom and opportunity. It is a world that flows with the greatest expressions of love and goodness. It is a world with incomparable life and beauty. And we have been invited not just to see it with new eyes but to begin living abundantly within it, and then help others to see it and experience it as well. Yes, even in the wreckage, even in the very worst circumstances, and even through immense and immeasurable pain, we have all been invited to presently enter the great embrace of heaven and earth, together.

Peace and love,

Brandon

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Check out the latest teaser trailer for And So By Fire, the sequel to my 2021 novel What Can’t Be Hidden, that comes out August 15th…