In this second Sunday of Easter, the Resurrection is still wonderfully in our minds and hearts. The first solo, sung by Ty Koch and accompanied by piano, is Chris Tomlin’s “I Will Rise” composed in 2008 with his collaborator Louie Giglio. Says Tomlin, “We were sitting across a table at lunch one day and he said, ‘Man, I feel like there needs to be more songs for people who are really going through the hardest time in life. They’re struggling and maybe have just buried someone and they’re looking over a grave. But what kind of words can you give people in that moment in worship, to worship God in the midst of it?’ And that song specifically speaks to that. I wrote down a little line that he said, ‘the grave is overwhelmed.’ That’s the line that he was carrying. I took that one line and built the song around it.” Having just looked over the grave of Christ on Good Friday, singing it in this post Easter season and during these difficult times is especially poignant. Here is a link to Tomlin performing his song:

The second solo “Ain’t No Grave” was suggested by the Rev. Simon LeSieur, who mentioned that hope is always at the heart of faith. In times of normalcy, it is hard to think of hope: it is the times of struggle and stress in which hope flourishes and can be found. Created when he was 12 and struggling with tuberculosis, Claude Ely composed this song in 1934. in a slow, black gospel style. Johnny Cash recorded the song shortly before his death in 2003. Here is YouTube link to Cash’s performance: