Show You Love

What’s in the picture, you may be asking? That, my little bloggettes and bloggites, is Jars of Clay. Taken by me. On my camera phone. Tonight.

Why was I there with my wife, you might ask? Because Marta and her husband showed us love. She called Elaine last night and said, “We want to get you two tickets for the concert.” We had a great night!

Derek Webb, formerly of Caedmon’s Call, opened. I enjoyed him-not at all your “safe” Christian singer. Had some challenging songs about our wealth and our love of the law instead of the Spirit.

Then we got Sara Groves, who was introduced by her two sons. She was great-just her at the keyboard, her husband on hand percussion, and some seriously good bass player.

Jars put on a great show. I was trying to remember with Elaine the last concert we went to, and I think it was Michael W. Smith and DC Talk in the early 90’s. Then I was remembering in college that I helped out with a concert at some church in Portland. “Which one?” Elaine asked. “I think it was Bryan Duncan.” To which the guy sitting next to Elaine said, “Uhh…you know that dates you a little bit, don’t ya?” 🙂

I think the high point of the night was “Nothin’ But the Blood.” It was a whole order of magnitude better than on the CD, which is good in itself. They know how to do this; lots of familiar stuff to open the show, then a bunch from Redemption Songs, one from Who We Are Instead, a few new ones from the upcoming CD (Dan said September for the release), and then they closed with Webb and Groves on stage for “I’ll Fly Away.” I was amazed at how many they did from their debut album (do you suppose they ever get tired of playing “Flood“? Didn’t show!) Much Afraid, If I Left the Zoo, and Eleventh Hour all got shut out, but we got 5 songs from the self-titled debut! I think they probably are their best songs.

I already thanked Marta and her husband privately, but this is a huge public thank you! A night of joy for us.

Show You Love from the album “Who We Are Instead” by Jars Of Clay is playing in iTunes