Common Ground Song 104 ‘ Restore, O Lord’
Words / Music: Graham Kendrick & Chris Rolinson © Kingsway’s Thankyou Music
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g4p3v06lhk
Featured image: Gold being refined. Original copyright holder unknown.

This three-verse song by Graham Kendrick was popular in its day (1980s/90s) but I have not heard it sung in church for a long time. I was reminded of it this morning when the reading at our smaller than usual prayer gathering (only four of us not on holiday this week!) was Revelation chapter 3. Verses 17-18: “You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.”

Like many of Kendrick’s lyrics, it had a prophetic edge to it that is as valid now as it was then. He seems to have understood what many in the Church constantly forget, that we are not just people who believe in Jesus and try to live a good life.  We are, in fact, Christ’s army here on earth in a spiritual battle against unseen forces.  Several writers in recent decades have identified ‘mammon’, the spiritual power behind the unjust accumulation and love of wealth, as one of those forces. Not for nothing did Jesus say that it was very difficult for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. So this passage in Revelation warns us that the sense of being self-sufficient in life (let alone being outrageously rich) is in fact a sin, in the sense of something that prevents us from receiving God’s blessing. True riches – ‘gold refined by fire’ are earned by serving Jesus through difficult times, paying more attention to what we do for others than what they can do for us, and not being led astray by the ways of the world.

The lyrics of this song do not, in fact, mention money, though the last verse picks up the reference in Revelation 3:17-18 to God purifying the gold in our lives. But they do have a sense of urgency in calling on God to act in power (verse 1), to revive the Church (verse 2) and to refine us as individuals in the face of suffering and evil (verse 3).

The last lines of the first two verses are similar: God’s kingdom, and his mercy, shall ‘outlast the years’. They have outlasted many an empire already, and will outlast whatever the ecological emergency of our time may throw at us. The latest oil crisis has, as usual, pushed up the value of gold (link), but it may be that riches of the dollar and gold bullion variety will mean nothing in the generations to come when all we are trying to do is survive., The riches of God’s power and mercy, by contrast, will always be a form of treasure worth holding on to.