Mitch McVicker
Album: Canticle of the Plains
Track: Oh My Lord
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Oh My Lord Lyrics Rich Mullins, Beaker, and Mitch McVicker
Vocals by Michael Tate
Philippians 2:6-8, Mark 10:33-34
When I think that the world would rise to condemn You.
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord
Well it makes me cry.
You know it makes me tremble.
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord
Oh my Jesus, sweet lamb of God
You emptied yourself and became just like us.
Then You set aside Your glory,
And You took up that cross.
Through the crowd, through the cursing soldiers.
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord.
You fell to the ground with the cross upon your shoulders.
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord
Oh my Jesus, oh Man of sorrows
When You saw Your mother standing there upon that road,
Did You feel the pain of the sword that would soon pierce her soul?
Oh my Lord, yeah, oh my Lord
(Oh my Lord, oh my Lord)
Oh my Lord, yeah, oh my Lord
(Oh my Lord, oh my Lord)
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord
(Oh my Lord, oh my Lord)
Well a man was made to help carry that weight,
And a woman was moved to wipe the blood from Your face.
And then you fell again,
And You're taking more than a man could take.
You said, "Sisters, sisters. Don't you weep for me."
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord.
And then once again fell down to Your knees.
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord.
Oh my Jesus, God's only one.
Well they stripped off Your clothes.
Then they cast their lots.
Oooh, they stretched out Your arms
And nailed Your hands to that cross.
See a broken heart - it's what made You die.
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord.
And the blood and the water flowed out from Your side.
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord.
Oh my Jesus, Giver of Grace.
You know, gentle hands they took You down
And laid You in that grave scene.
No one believed You'd be back in three short days.
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord
(Oh my Lord, oh my Lord)
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord
(Oh my Lord, oh my Lord)
Oh my Lord, oh my Lord
(Oh my Lord, oh my Lord)
Yeah.
When they get done praying, they hear the shriek of Clare's eagle, and the soldiers who are camped very nearby, they also hear the shriek. But when they hear it, they think it's a bugle call and that they're under attack, and so they are trying to get out of their blankets, and they're trying to ... it's of course night, and it throws the entire soldier camp into this massive confusion where they're just firing their rifles in every direction, and when the eagle shrieks, the calf hears it, and also the lion hears it, and they run over to the soldier's camp, which is now in a state of confusion. The lion leaps into this corral of horses, and all the horses run away. Of course, they're terrified of the lion. And so the army has now shot out all of their ammunition. Their horses are gone so they can't retreat. And there is a munitions cart, and someone hooks the calf up to the munitions cart so that they can reload, but the calf takes the munitions further away instead of bringing it toward them. So the army is entirely defeated without anybody having to use any kind of violence. And they're defeated basically by the four creatures, or at least by the first three. What has happened in the meantime, is because the Navajo people revere the eagle, when they hear the eagle shriek, they knew that God was gonna do something. So they surround the army camp, and when light comes up, the army looks out, and they see that they are completely surrounded by a band of Navajos who are now well-fed, who now have ammunition, who are fully equipped for battle, and they assume, "Wow, we're going to be wiped out." And Rhoda, who is the human of the four creatures, then she talks to the army and says, "I talked to Jesus last night, and He told me to tell you that He doesn't like what you're doing, and that you need to back off." And then she says, "I talked to Jesus last night, and He told me He was concerned about you, because you don't know how to be happy. And you are violent against us now, because the war between yourselves has ended. And someday you'll take that violence across the seas. And that won't make you happy. And after that, you will do violence to your own children, and that won't make you happy. You'll never be happy until you learn to love life and quit being violent. And He told me that you probably would never believe me." And then she says, "I talked to Jesus last night, and he told me to ask you if you were hungry, because we have more food than we need to get us back to Dineh Bekeya, so we will leave you what food we don't need. And he told me to ask you if you were cold, because we have more blankets than you have left us people to wrap in them. And we're going to leave you these blankets. And He told me to tell you that we would provide an escort to get you back to Fort Sumner, or Bosque Redondo, because you've made this world a violent world, and He's made you defenseless in it, and we will protect you to get you back to where you belong. But don't bother us anymore. And when she says that the band of Navajos leave to go to Dineh Bekeya. And Rhoda, the beautiful Navajo woman walks back toward the camp where Buzz and Ivory, and now Clare has joined them, because she came with her eagle. And they discover that Frank can't be found anywhere, and they're afraid that he was killed in all the confusion. And they all go out searching for him, no one can find him. They come back, and as they're talking about Frank, he comes back. And they sort of sum up his life. They talk about how he went out to look for Christ, but everywhere he went, he spread Christ. They talk about how he didn't own a thing, but all the resources of the world seemed to be at his disposal. They talked about all those things about Frank, and Frank comes back and joins them. And Clare finally says, "The only thing that I don't get, the only thing that doesn't really make sense, is I thought that we were going to meet between the four sacred mountains." Or, she says, "I thought we were going to meet in Dineh Bekeya." And Frank says, "Well, in a sense we did. Where is Dineh Bekeya?" And she said, "Well, Dineh Bekeya is the land of the people. It's the land between the four sacred mountains." And he says, "Well look around us, and we have four sacred creatures. We have the eagle, we have the human, we have the calf, and we have the lion. And those four creatures surround the throne of God, and they sing 'Holy, holy, holy' and bring worship to Him. And wherever God is, that is really where the land of the people is. That is where we really belong. And when we're close to God, we can come close to one another. And apart from God, we don't have any place; we don't have any dwelling." And so they all begin to recognize what I think is at the core of Franciscan spirituality, that our experience as humans is only as rich as we come close to an experience of God. And this is when Frank sneaks off again, as is his habit, and he wants to go sing love songs to God. And "You Are All" is the last song of the thing, and it's sort of his ... this is based again on another of the prayers of St. Francis. And it's sort of just a closing worship song that he sings and lifts up to God.
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