Published August 23rd, 2007 by hrabbach
Casting Crowns - East to West
Wow, the CD containing this song hasn’t even been released and I’m already writing about it - after several months of silence, mostly due to too much other work. But “East to West” really caught my attention. I had the privilege of hearing Casting Crowns perform this song live back in June at the Frenzy festival in Edinburgh/Scotland and now that they released it as the first single from their new album “The Altar and the Door”, they put it up on their MySpace page for people to listen to it. It’s fantastic and I like the music just as much as I like the lyrics.
The song addresses something that I know quite well - a disconnection between knowing and feeling. I know Jesus died for me and I know that through Him I am without sin. But it’s often seems like such an impossible thing that my feelings can’t quite keep up with my knowledge. And so there’s always the fear of backsliding into old ways, where the “old man” that has died in me comes back to life because it seems impossible for my heart to understand the magnitude of what He has done. “But today I feel like I’m just one mistake away from you leaving me this way…” is a feeling I know all too well. Don’t get me wrong, being a little bit careful and trying not to sin is a good thing - but being scared of making just one mistake is something that clearly Jesus doesn’t want us to be. “Can’t live by what I feel, but by the truth Your work reveals…” - that’s what it’s about. Our emotions and feelings are more often than not of very little help when we want to follow Jesus in every situation of our lives. “Time and time again your truth is drowned out by the storm I’m in” - if we believe the feelings that overwhelm us in the storm, then it gets a lot more difficult than it should be.
So what can we do? Nothing! We can’t do anything - but Jesus can. We know that He has removed our sin from us “as far as the east is from the west” (Psalm 103:12) and all the song is really asking for is for Jesus to show us just how far that really is. We need to understand that we cannot easily be reached by our old sin - it’s gone and Jesus hung on the Cross to get between us and that old sin. Because that’s how far the east is from the west: “from one scarred hand to the other”!
Song: East to West
Artist: Casting Crowns
Album: The Altar and the Door
