sara groves
lessons in abiding SONGWRITER AND ARTIST SARA GROVES KNOWS WELL THAT LIFE — EVEN THE LIFE OF A CHRISTIAN — IS NOT ALL EASY LIVING IN THE SUNSHINE, DEVOID OF ALL TRIAL AND DARKNESS. She has cycled through both dark and light seasons in her life, but has always returned to her awareness of God’s constant presence. Much of her music over her 20-year career reflects this integration of her faith with the other parts of her life, with its ebb and flow, questions and answers, ups and downs. “Part of my work and passion,” Sara says, “is to tear down the sacred-secular divide, where people look at their lives and say, ‘These are the spiritual things; these are the other things.’” As a positive celebration of God’s presence and provision during a difficult period in her life, Sara’s latest album, Abide With Me, is part of that faith-life connection in how it relates to her previous album Floodplain. Initially Sara resisted creating Floodplain, which documents her journey through anxiety and depression. “Probably four or five years ago, I was in one of the
darkest seasons I have ever been in,” she says. Feeling as though no one was praying as much as she was, but yet the depression was not being lifted from her, Sara began asking questions and processing what was going on with her during that season of her life. She felt like God was inviting her “to document life on the floodplain when the waters rise.” During that time, the hymns that found their way onto the current album, Abide With Me, were the songs that brought her comfort while she was “on the floodplain.” “I felt like God was extending friendship to me in that place,” Sara says, further commenting that many of the songs on Abide With Me declare friendship with God. “He sits with us, He dwells with us when we are struggling and hurting. [In His grace], God extends this radical friendship to us in any number of places that we find ourselves.” Further affirming the connection between the two albums, a friend of Sara’s, after listening to Floodplain, described it as emphasizing not depression, but provision. “I feel like that’s true,” Sara agrees. “That record is about provision. This album [Abide With Me] is giving language to that provision, to what that has looked like for hymn writers across the centuries. The best hymns we have were written in the middle of great lament and tremendous trial.” Sara decided the timing was right to put together a
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