Dweller By A Dark Stream

I’m a late-comer to the Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, but I’m making up for lost time. I love his work. I’ve been listening to his Dweller By A Dark Stream over and over. It’s a beautiful love song to Jesus that gets so much right. This little song has a ton of good theology on atonement, incarnation and eschatology. Not bad for a song! Check it out.

Dweller By A Dark Stream
Bruce Cockburn

It could have been me put the thorns in your crown
Rooted as I am in a violent ground
How many times have I turned your promise down
Still you pour out your love
Pour out your love

I was a dweller by a dark stream
A crying heart hooked on a dark dream
In my convict soul I saw your love gleam
And you showed me what you’ve done
Jesus, thank-you joyous Son

You entered a life like ours to give us back our own
You wanted us like you, as choosers not clones
You offered up your flesh and death was overthrown
Now salvation is ours,
Salvation is ours

I was a dweller by a dark stream
A crying heart hooked on a dark dream
In my convict soul I saw your love gleam
And you showed me what you’ve done
Jesus, thank-you joyous Son

So when I’m walking this prison camp world
I long for a glimpse of the new world unfurled
The chrysalis cracking and moisten wings uncurl
Like in the vision John saw
The vision John saw

I was a dweller by a dark stream
A crying heart hooked on a dark dream
In my convict soul I saw your love gleam
And you showed me what you’ve done
Jesus, thank-you joyous Son

What a great song!
Like I said, it gets so much right.
Consider…

It’s the light of Christ’s love which leads us out of our dark dream.
It was our violence that put the crown of thorns on Christ.
Jesus joined us in our humanity to redeem our humanness.
Death swallowed the Son of God and thereby death was overthrown.
This broken world is not the end of the story…there is a new world to come.
John the Revelator saw a vision of that new world…new life being born out of old.

The chrysalis cracking and moisten wings uncurl like in the vision John saw.

Amen.

BZ

PS: Of course the song needs to be heard to be appreciated. You can get it on iTunes. Get the version found on the album Mummy Dust. You might as well get the whole album, it’s great!