Cover Me

Track ten is the most naked prayer on the album, and after the joy of the last song that is exactly right - because joy that has never been honest about the shame underneath is a thin joy. Cover Me goes back into the silence and tells the truth. Every thought that rose within me carried silent shame. Every truth I tried to hide still remained the same.

This is the doctrine of imputed righteousness sung as a cry for help. The man in this song has tried everything a man can try. I tried to be forgiven, tried to be made whole, but every effort only showed the darkness in my soul. He cannot make himself clean and he knows it. No strength of mine could make me clean. No will of mine could intervene. And so there is nothing left to do but ask to be covered - in mercy I could never earn, in love I could never return.

That word, cover, is the entire gospel of the song. I am not asking God to help me improve. I am asking Him to put something over me that is not mine - the righteousness of Another - and to call this broken heart Your own. The bridge rests it where it has to rest: nothing mine, nothing earned, only grace freely given. This is the most vulnerable I get on the record, and it is vulnerable on purpose. A man only learns to say cover me when he has finally stopped pretending there is anything else that will work.