Behind the music…. The Garden

I’d like to share a little something of the stories that lie behind the songs on the album The Garden, by mine and Kevin’s band Out of the Ashes…. So let’s start with the title track!

(Many thanks to Andy T and the team at Sound Consultancy for the wonderful video!)

I’ve heard it said that when women buy perfume, they are not buying a nice smell, they are buying hope. I find this so profound; we are buying hope that we will be more beautiful, more complete and perhaps, ultimately, more successful.

It occurs to me that this is, perhaps, the driving force behind our consumerist, shopaholic society. When we go searching for the right shoes, that perfect dress, the best home entertainment system or whatever pushes our shopaholic buttons, are we in fact buying hope? And, if so, bearing in mind the destruction wrought in the lives of so many by their need to spend money, isn’t it time we started looking elsewhere than the mall to find the hope we crave?

As I get to know God more closely –  a gradual process I have to say – I envisage a garden that He has planned for me to live in. It is full of things that he has created and I am surrounded by his beauty; in his care I feel safe, well fed, peaceful, happy and, yes, the longing of the perfume buyer, I feel beautiful.

This is the hope that we are promised through Jesus Christ… for me, it is epitomised by The Garden.