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So. A Romans-15:20-creative-access ministry with an unconventional media production arm releases a cryptic dirge illustrated through a lyric video filled with fire, empty alcohol bottles, and puddled wounds of prop blood. In the words of the King James, “What meanest thou this?”
Let’s talk about “costly,” the third and final single of its title EP, out on all platforms today.
I started writing songs when I was in junior high, and once I acquired my first Fender knock-off at fourteen, I pursued it in a really deliberate way. Before I knew how to process the cliche angst and confusion of adolescence—and long before I had a clue how to pray—I began to learn both with clunky prose written by fine-point black ink filling untold scores of college-ruled spiral notebooks, undergirded by chunky chords I didn’t understand (even now, I will be the first to say technical proficiency has never been my forte). But I wanted desperately to sing a song that mattered, one no one else had written yet. I spent years digging for it.
You will never see those scrawls. You will never hear those songs. Most songs are easily, quickly, outgrown. All of those early attempts at something meaningful were.
Writing “costly” marked the threshold of exposure. It is the oldest song I’ve ever written that I’m still willing to show anybody; really, I’ve held onto it for as long as I have because I knew the world might need it and, like a diamond, the song needed the right setting for light to bounce off of it the way it’s meant to. It stayed in my pocket until years later, when I had “galilee” and “redwood” to sandwich it between. I wrote it all but fresh out of college, before I’d ever board a plane to leave the U.S.; before the Middle East, before New Zealand. This song has aged with me, but I’ve found myself returning to it as if it were the sage. But it is an unusual song, meant for very particular moments in this “present evil age”[1] of Exile,[2] so this op-ed is something of a cheat sheet to make sense of it (and the weird lyric video). Maybe put it in your pocket for a while. You might need it later.
I’m not given to autobiographical disclosure on the internet, and the experiences that birthed this song involve hearts and stories I’m committed to guard. Forgive me, then, if even the explanation remains a bit cryptic. But it’s important you know that I was in a setting with a profound emphasis on the idea of lifestyle intercession—to “stand in the gap”[3] of prayer, to live simply, give generously, and beg God to put interventions of how justice and mercy can kiss on wild display. In a literal sense, this community is committed to hours of prayer on a daily basis, corporately and individually. But if biblical convictions don’t mature beyond intellectual assent, prayer is just a chore. When God invites you—and we are all invited—into His story, He invites us into His heart. That’s a holy thing, and we know He will not offer pearls to swine.[4] We have to take this seriously. I vowed, in my zealous youth, to seek the beauty of the Lord “all the days of my life,”[5] and this community gave me a context to really begin that journey. I am so grateful.
And I was so naïve.
The Lord though, made me and was the first to know what my mom has known since I was in diapers: I have to learn things the hard way. So if I was going to learn intercession, I wasn’t going to read about it in a book, and I wasn’t going to absorb it through the osmosis of melody. I want to be very clear: the community I was in takes the character of Jesus very seriously, and puts their money where their mouth is. They walk the talk. I’m not suggesting for a moment that the environment was insufficient and needed some sovereign injection of reality. Rather, it provided a greenhouse for rapid growth and encounter. All the same, sometimes you look for Jesus in a cozy space—but He’s only willing to meet you in a dark back alley offering what looks like more risk than reward.[6] And that’s what He ordained for me in that season.
I had a friend entrenched in cyclical self-destruction and addiction. Some of you know these snares, know how long these tentacles can reach and how difficult it can be for an addict to get free. And the Lord invited me to get in the trench and try to pull this friend back out. Some of you know you can fast all the fasts and pray all the prayers and fight the good fight, but life on this side of eternity doesn’t always write a happy ending. So it was in this case. It was a slow, devastating demise.
We fast and pray and fight the good fight anyway, because it is right. Jesus is worth a faithful representation mirrored in His Image-bearers, and people deserve to receive that faithful witness. Paul would say doing so “fulfills the law of Christ.”[7] Anyway, this is how “costly” was written: a complicated crash and burn of high hopes that did not end with the “happily ever after” restoration that necessarily demands voluntary sobriety. To say I was discouraged is an understatement. But I was working in a coffee shop at that point, saving up money to move to the South Pacific, and spent many-a shifts quietly praying for the Lord to bring clarity. What was all that effort for, if all we did was clean a room out for a demon to return to with six of his buddies?[8]
As I reached down to the fridge under the bar to grab a new gallon of milk during one nondescript evening shift, an answer dropped in my gut. Thirteen words and a melody:
“The cowards will run when love demands courage—and all those costly things.”
I knew immediately (in my head; it would take years to percolate into my heart): You did good, kid. And the crux of it all: I never said it wouldn’t hurt. I went to an evening service after my shift and the rest of the lyrics poured out during worship (which was, to be sure, a much less dirge-y set). Afterwards, I grabbed my guitar and tinkered in the corner of my friend’s living room (I was crashing on their couch, which was full of people hanging out at the time) and had the melody. Not all songs come to you in a literal night. This one did—and it carried me through many more nights to come. As I said, I’ve returned to this song like I’ve sought a sage, guiding me through the blood and sinew as skeletal ideals took flesh and form through all life brought and birthed in the many years since this night.
Here I find the line where normal words fail to capture the scene, and pivot instead to the lyrics of the song to work verse-by-verse alongside the video.
Stay alive, friend; don’t give up now
Tempting it is when others go down
I know it hurts; I know these bullets burn
But we are “more than conquerors”
Paul’s language for “more than conquerors” in Romans 8:37 means something like invincibility—“super-conquerors,” if you will. But it’s on the heels of realizing the Father’s sovereign shepherding will lead us straight into the slaughter. If we don’t see this age as the means by which He prepares us to be a “suitable companion” for the Son of Man,[9] we will literally miss the point of our lives entirely.
Stay alive, friend; don’t leave the field
Sword in hand, you know this war is real
Bitterness is the death of fallen flesh
Still, no one’s to be left behind just yet
“The field” means something different to me now, but I didn’t write this song in the Middle East, or anywhere near it. I wrote it on converted farmland in a fly-over state in Middle America. We are to “fight the good fight”[10] and “press on”[11] till our last breath. The field is this age. And bitterness is like Lyme disease—it’s not the tick that bit you, but it’s what’ll get into your blood if you leave it there long enough without cleaning the wound. Metaphors fall apart. We have two war fronts: the war without, and the war within. The greatest victory you can win is to enter eternity with a tender heart and light in your eyes. Guard your heart. We’ll get to that more in a moment. First, the chorus:
Rhetoric and words are useless for the dirge
Such songs were never cheap
The cowards will run when love demands courage
And all those costly things
Grief and mystery have this in common: words fail. Sometimes the best thing you and your buddies can do is just sit in the quiet, sit in the wait. We won’t get all the answers till the Lord returns and reveals all things. And I do believe we are born into war—for our souls, for our families, for our destinies. Nothing comes easy. And nothing of value is cheap. The only thing that’ll win the True Great War is the blood that soaks the crossbeams of the only covenant that won’t buckle in eternity. The “Everlasting Covenant.”[12] But there are no pep rallies for the Day of Days, no fortune cookies or Hallmark cards to mark the moments lives are won or lost. Very simply, victories require blood, sweat, and tears. Hosea was told to “Go again.”[13] We cannot expect the presence of intercession to be easy. It will empty our pockets, jeopardize our plans, and compromise our reputations. But “you shall be holy, as your Father is holy.”[14] You shall act and live and love just as He does.
Stay alive, friend; don’t forsake love
For it’s all that covers your shed blood
I know it hurts to grieve; I know it hurts to breathe
But guard, above all, your heart in the siege
Perhaps weirdly, one of the first Bible verses I memorized was Proverbs 4:23—above all things, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. I don’t know where I first saw it. But as I grappled with the gory end of my role in this friend’s story, I needed to know I wasn’t ducking out for my own convenience. I didn’t want toxic codependence, but I didn’t want to be a coward either. And my Father whispered sure: You’ve done all you can for now, and there’s more ahead. Get to the medic tent.
I know this: the Lord does not need us for victory. He has, can, and will secure it on His own. But He’s fashioning a suitable helpmeet to work with and alongside Him in eternity,[15] and we would be fools to squander opportunities now to be conformed into His Image,[16] let alone pass up the holy privilege of fellowshipping with Him in His suffering.[17] He suffers in the trenches, on the fields of our wars. He fights for us. We either “soldier up”[18] and meet Him there, or we miss the point of this sacrificial age altogether. What a waste that would be.
Rhetoric and words are useless for the dirge
Such songs were never cheap
The cowards will run when love demands courage
And all those costly things
It’s difficult to see why the wounded would rather lie and bleed
It’s difficult to see why captives don’t always want to be free
But it was never yours to solve the mystery of man’s iniquity
And all those costly things
All those costly things
The “costly” lyric video was filmed at the Eli Cohen Building in Israel’s Golan Heights. It was originally a Syrian Command Center, in the twenty-three years Syria controlled the Golan and converted it into an artillery base to shell the hell out of the Hula Valley below. It is now a shell itself, bombed out to oblivion. It stands as a memorial to Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who infiltrated Damascus. His story has been told in Netflix’s The Spy, and should rightly be remembered as a man without whom, Israel would have never won the Golan Heights in the Six Day War. It seemed like the perfect place—as covered in graffiti as it is, as half-standing-destroyed as it is, to set a scene for someone drowning in whatever measure of defeat to leave their dungeon, walk outside, and see the sun again. “Get into the light.” We don’t leave the building, but we do get victory over the damages we see and incur in the dark. And sometimes, like the day we happened to film, you catch a good view of an absolutely magnificent sunset.
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Galatians 1:4
[2] Genesis 3:22-24
[3] Ezekiel 22:30
[4] Matthew 7:6
[5] Psalm 27:4
[6] Song of Solomon 3:1-5; 5:2-8
[7] Galatians 6:2
[8] Matthew 12:45
[9] Genesis 2:18; Matthew 22:1-14
[10] 1 Timothy 6:12
[11] Philippians 3:7-12
[12] Hebrews 13:20
[13] Hosea 3:1
[14] Matthew 5:48
[15] Ephesians 5:31-32
[16] Romans 8:29
[17] Philippians 3:10
[18] See “Soldier Up” by Dalton Thomas here; see also 2 Timothy 2:3
