As millions of people all over the world celebrate Easter, a particular song has popped up in my own little world this weekend. I’ve already heard it twice in two days at my church’s Good Friday service and a rendition by Skye Peterson during a concert Saturday evening (Holy Saturday), the amazing Andrew Peterson and his Resurrection Letters Tour. The song is “Were You There?”
One peculiar coincidence (probably not a coincidence, actually) is that both versions I’ve heard this weekend stop short of how I remember the song wrapping up going way back to when I first heard it as a member of staff at a summer camp in Missouri in 2001. I think there’s a reason for the shortened versions. The first verses could be categorized as pre-resurrection. Questions like “Were you there when the crucified my Lord?,” “Were you there when they pierced Him in the side?,” “Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb?”.
The final verse (or verses, depending on which version you listen to) could be called the resolution. The verses leading up to it are somber. But then these questions arise with celebratory power, “Were you there when the stone was rolled away?” and “Were you there when He rose up from the dead?” The repeating phrase that “it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble” is swapped out now to say “I feel like shouting glory, glory, glory.” Maybe most of the song is about Good Friday and Holy Saturday and the concluding verse is Easter Sunday… a reason to shout glory, glory, glory! To borrow a phrase from another favorite song, “Glory, glory, hallelujah, His truth is marching on.”
-Out of the Wilderness
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Out of the Wilderness 