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Is it not simply wonderful when the words of a song so deeply resonate with something in your core being? God made us to have connections like this, and the media of art, whether visual, kinetic (dance) or sound (music) have the power, at their best, to communicate to a gloriously wide community expressions and experiences of wondrous personal depth. Such a collision of openness and profundity are able to draw together a whole community around a profound encounter with beauty, a rivulet from the Fountain of all Beauty, our Creator God.
Lacey Sturm is one of my favourite Christian spiritual writers and poets, with a courage to express her intense encounter with Christ in overwhelming internal battles with anger, bitter regret and self-destruction, and yearning for the deep love of Jesus - which I relate to viscerally, and am challenged by because I know the courage this takes to bare one’s soul before a wide, often critical and less-than-understanding audience. How hard it is to share something that deeply matters to you, only to be met with blank stares and confusion (let alone actual criticism)... this is the cost of being an artist like her - but I am so thankful! When I find siblings in Christ who I deeply relate to (such as, for me, Charles Spurgeon), this connection is so precious and a little foretaste of how we will finally be to one another, when this realm of aching loneliness, greyness and bitter struggle finally breaks forth into the pure, holy love before the face of Christ in our final home when He returns.
And so I felt inspired to write some reflections on her latest album, Kenotic Metanoia, released 17th November 2023, as song after song seemed so relatable and healing. The title speaks in the native tongue of the New Testament, of wholehearted surrender. ‘Kenotic’ is from Greek ‘kenosis’, ‘emptying out’, abandoning all reputation and pride, applied to Jesus in Philippians 2:7. ‘Metanoia’ is Greek for ‘repentance’, an about-turn, a deep changing of one’s mind. Combined together we have the idea of emptying self and turning to God… it is an earnest autobiographical and emotive journey. Even the colour of the album artwork (at the top of this post) is purple, a potential connection with the liturgical colour of Lent, the season of repentance and returning to God in the Sturm family’s Eastern Orthodox expression.
What inspired this album? As she wrote on her Instagram:
“We wanted this album to come out 3 years ago. Much like the title of our first album [Life Screams], many things in life were screaming at us. We embraced the beauty of a bittersweet unknown.
Kenotic Metanoia is a story of where we’ve been, where we are and where we want to go. Things in life don’t always happen in the timing we want, but we’ve had to learn to embrace the adventure that life is and be present as it unfolds, whatever that looks like. We hope that these songs speak to you. But the truth is, we wrote them only for our own souls. Life can be shocking and incomprehensible. There is a unique and saving beauty that can bloom out of the chaos.
Kenotic Metanoia is our prayer. It is us reaching out to receive grace, to live each day, with open hands, open eyes and an open heart”
I really value the work of artists whose expressions are ‘only for their own souls’, because their heart can shine through unfiltered, without the fog and gaudiness of cliche, social norms, expectations and deceptive facades. And so much of this album is in the form of an intense prayer to our Lord Jesus - battling with despair and lies and all that is against us. “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:57)
As an extended personal reflection, let me share just some quotes and parts of this that particularly deeply connect with me and my own longing for Jesus Christ in fighting against the despair and bitterness of life:
ARE YOU LISTENING?
Is heaven far away?
We don't wanna jump but we don't want to stay here
If only we could just be caught away
Oh my God, please help me!”
Here introduced is the beautiful theme of cosmic homesickness, one I have consistently related to for years, a longing for the end of this bitter struggle, a painfully strong longing to be with Christ - which permeates the whole album. Here it is spoken of like a fragrance - just as the fragrance of cinnamon captivates our senses and perhaps makes us think of Christmas, the fragrance of Christ in this world makes us long for everything to finally be made new.
THE DECREE
Five long months looking at trees that seem like they are dead
Blackened twisted broken still full bloom inside her head
'Cause she believes 'til she can see
The time's not near, it's here
A holy fear is here
This song is gloriously, strikingly, shatteringly intense, beginning with the visceral scream of ‘Help!’ and then moving into a vision of faith that can see the promises of God fulfilled even before anything has actually changed. I consider the screamed-out vocal another colour to add to the spectrum of musical artistry, and feel in a world as disastrously hard and messed-up as ours, nothing but a scream makes any sense. And again I feel how I long to scream out the life of Jesus over this devastated place! It is so good to hear music that actually starts to take what’s actually at stake here seriously.
TERRIBLE MISTAKE
I'm beginning to question what they promised me
I'm beginning to recognize that this freedom feels like slavery
They've made a terrible mistake
Misjudging all your motives
The cosmos expand at your command
And yet somehow I'm invited in
With a song of love so beyond my soul
How could I ever drink it in?
Oh my trembling soul
Bows as low as I can go
Can it be I've already died?
I am your living sacrifice
I don't know how I'm still alive
I am your living sacrifice
This song has really helped me even in the last few days, as I struggle with doubts as to the love and goodness of God as I don’t understand His Word. I realise my doubts here as to the motives of God are such a “terrible mistake”, and my feeling drawn towards the promises of this world leads to such disappointment. What society calls ‘freedom’ ends up feeling to me like slavery - while what God does, while as a little child with a caring doctor does not necessarily understand why they do what they do, why they give the medicine they do, we can trust God is infinitely good, in real terms, and there is no evil in Him. And we see beauty in nature and in humanity pointing, like road signs, to the Infinite glory of God, but we so often ignore the arrows, and instead worship the signposts!
This piece then moves into an encounter with the vastness and wonder of God - again a poignant theme through the whole album - and what I would call the sheer delight of being overwhelmed in ‘holy fear’, deep, trembling reverence in the presence of the Creator of everything. In this space the struggles finally shrink as we encounter His infinite vastness. Here her work has helped me to tangibly see the baffling, mysterious yet paradigm-transforming and life-giving truth of Proverbs 9:10 -
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,
and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
This ‘fear’ is not one of repulsion and hatred, like other fear is, where we detest being near the objects of our fear. Instead, it is one of glory, like the encounter with the awesome, awe-full reality of God, who is the One our hearts crave after more than any other. In this space our overwhelming longing is for the full surrender and abandonment of self to our Creator, as the ‘living sacrifice’ of belonging so wholly to Him, which Romans 12:1 proclaims is not because we feel forced to surrender (like the defeat of an army) but instead “in view of God’s mercy”. In this narrative of this soaring experience, we see her brought to what I would say is the most wonderful human experience ever known - to a taste of wholehearted worship that consumes everything we are.
WONDERFUL
And all of these questions dragging you under
Will only be answered when you start to wonder
All crowns on the ground
We have worshipped creation
The price for these lies cost
Every generation
I'm so afraid to see it all
So I look away
Forgive me Lord
I'm so afraid I'm trembling
How can I stay in your presence Lord
Kyrie Eleison
This continues the majestic theme of trembling encounter in worship with the infinite God, and this fear being the beginning of wisdom, and how every question fades away in this space. It reminds me of the later chapters of Job, where God encounters the devastated man with not systematic explanations, but unbounded wonder, who proclaims in the face of such wondrous revelation of the majestic beauty of his Creator:
You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know. (Job 42:3)
And so he turns everything he is to God, not by force but with willingness, realising his own insignificance and finding everything in Him. This statement encapsulates a lot of this album too and the sense of ‘self-emptying repentance’ captured in the title, ‘Kenotic Metanoia’:
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:5-6)
In my deep struggles with questions, and wrestling over the nature of God, I know more than any logical breakthrough, an encounter with His wonder brings us to a place and trust and peace and surrender that finally allows the war to end and us to know and receive His love without doubt as to its authenticity.
Kyrie Eleison - Lord, have mercy!
THIEF
There's a liar inside
Trying to gain your trust
But it ends tonight
'Cause we're falling in love
Stay here with me
You never have to leave
Love cost me everything
So tell him shut up, get back, shut up
The battle continues between the lies of this world that lodge themselves in our hearts and the truth of the perfect Rabbi and teacher, Jesus. And, profoundly, the more we love Him the more we believe in Him and see the lies for what they are. So I will no longer allowed myself to be deceived of beautiful truth by these thieving lies!
AWAKEN LOVE
Oh, would you please take me away?
I don't wanna stay too late...
There’s vertigo in my soul at Your Name
Love lingers like blood on my tongue, still honey in my mouth
Fragrant in my songs, spreading out like the dawn
Beauty only you gavе to me, a wedding dress you made
I'm yours to hidе away, I'm yours, all yours to display
Always searching, asking that everywhere
Looking for the One I love, that every dream come true is made of
And I heard the whisper of your name, and just the mention makes me faint
I fall in under your embrace
And your fragrance, filling me with life
My racing heart so safe with you, they can't take me away from you
And they told me I couldn't find you here, but here you are to prove them wrong
And I will sing your song of all songs, all songs
This song is absolutely mesmerising, an extended meditation on Song of Songs as using the symbol of human love between bride-bridegroom, to symbolise (together with other prophetic works, namely Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah and Revelation) the love of Christ and His Church. “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:32). She connects this with the deeply mysterious physical encounter with the sacrament of Holy Communion.
That line “the One I love, that every dream come true is made of” has brought me to tears so many times… as it is so gloriously true that all the real good of every dream we have ever had, the longing for love, security, adventure, purpose, wonder, delight, everything, is found in Jesus. And so that oh-so-relatable yearning reappears here, “Oh, would you please take me away?”
RECONCILE
I thought my knuckles were bleeding for the right reasons
Fighting the good fight in every open season
Now my hands are busy pulling out planks of wood
My eye sockets filling up with my own blood
Pride, can't she just shut up and die?
Her bones are all blazing inside
Can't I just shut up and die?
Beckon your help, change my mind
Reckon myself dead and die
Here is a powerful use of Jesus’ imagery of Matthew 7:4, “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?“ The idea is that, under the guise of “fighting the good fight” in confrontational and argumentative ways, she feels she has become hypocritical and needing to pull end up ‘planks’ out of her own eyes.
In this song of warfare, the motif of dying to sin, and receiving in the process utter freedom, and then being raised to new life in Christ, is brought forward, a longing to die to the old self where we self-righteously fight for our opinions. I love the freedom this brings - no half-measures, but complete death and new life!
(I DIED)
But as your blood intervenes
She's dying while you hold her
She only looks like me
But that's not me
Oh, call me by my new name!
He gave me a new name
The death that Christ brings us to of our old selves, so we can have new life connected to Him forever, is one of deep surrender and, far from being limiting, is utterly life-giving. A ‘new name’, one of freedom from all the regret of the past. And through this process of death and rebirth in union with Christ, He holds us the whole time, in His arms, even as we pass through this phase of the death that preceded new life. His intention and mood towards us, as we go through this dying-to-self process, is one of love, not anger and harshness. And this song lives out the profound expression of Paul in Col. 3:3-4 -
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Our life is no longer where it used to be - we died to our old identity and everything we are, and now all our life is found in Christ! Here finally is true and unrelenting freedom and love and life, of a calibre the world, especially in my experience, simply never gives - never even coming close.
BREATHE WITH ME
How'd you end up on the ocean floor?
You can't hold your breath here anymore
But up on the surface where the sun burns us
The light of the day sings, "Come explore"
Go take a deep breath of the open air
And don't forget all you will learn there
'Cause back under water it only gets darker
So burn in your memory the way to keep breathing
This one came out around the time we moved to Northern Ireland in summer 2023, and so I associate it with here a great deal! What struck me with it is speaking of this “open air”, a picture of our true home with Christ in the heavenly places, and how our encounters with Him in prayer in the now are like the deep, gasping breaths of life-giving oxygen, where we have been holding our breath in anguish in the deep ocean for too long.
So often I sense I am again in a space where I am no longer breathing, where the breath I am holding is running out, and I am gasping for air, but fearing I will drown - as though I am in the darkness and relentless pressure of the ocean floor. But we are not called to live here! So much could be said here for our idolatry of busyness in our culture, and how fruitless it is in the long-term.
This brings to mind the earlier verses quoted for the previous song, in Colossians:
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col. 3:1-2)
Let us live in the wondrous open air of where Christ is, not on the sparkly rubbish of this world!
END THE WARS
But this еxpanse, it never еnds
And I'm afraid, I feel alone
I'll never win this war on my own
But I won't be crowning death as my saviour
Have I tried to bring
My unworthy strife
Filthy rags for a sacrifice
Oh the scandal of the death of God
Oh my, how profoundly relatable this is! This unrelenting ‘climb’ of life, ever having to do more, to be more, to spend more and more days struggling to get through them - afraid of how I can face the future, feeling alone and as though no-one else seems to struggle as much as you about all this. On the other hand, we might look back and feel like our own efforts were worthy - but in fact unless they are worked by the Spirit of God they are ‘unworthy strife’ like ‘filthy rags’. A realisation comes that I simply cannot do this alone - but also not allowing the idea of leaving this world, in death, as the way out, as the salvation and escape route I have been longing for. No, for God has a better way than this!
Now there's only one way left for me to die
And it can't be just my own cross
My blood would leave the world lost
The war was won before I ever fell
Oh God took and faced my own hell
And every work he does well
So I enter into heaven's perfect work
Finished from the earths beginning
Jesus Christ my ending
This, like so many of the progressions on this album, feels like the dawning of a breakthrough, a condensed, saturated version of what must have been so many of her prayers. Here the idea of self-sacrifice as an end in itself is dismissed, or the idea that we can redeem the world by being consumed with our cause until we pay with blood. No, that will do nothing but waste! For the only One who can win the war in our hearts and our minds is Jesus, who died so that we could die with Him, and won the victory so we could live and also win the war with Him. O Lord how wondrous it is that You even faced our “own hell”, even an endless strength of torment, for us! Our hearts are so dry and weak and sick to feel so little towards You. No-one else has ever done anything like this for us - how we are brought to delight in laying down everything at His feet!
This song gives me an invigorating draft of hope, that the wars I so fear in my life, are being fought and won by Him who has so joined Himself to me and to all His followers. One day all these wars will end, these huge internal struggles forever! He is bringing about the brightest sunrise of all, spoke of in Revelation 21:3-5 -
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
He who was seated on the throne said,
“I am making everything new!”
Then he said,
“Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Now, all of the above are only my personal encounters with this music, so I would completely imagine your perspective might be in some ways similar, perhaps many ways entirely different. So what about you? I would so love to hear from you - have a listen to this album… and let us know which parts connect with you most and why!
And thank you so much to you Lacey for sharing with us such a gift of the work of God’s Spirit in shining Jesus through your heart. Glory to God in the highest!