Grace and Peace

Track fifteen is the last song on the album, and the last song in the whole catalog - and it could only ever have been this one. Grace and Peace is my sign-off. It is the way I have closed nearly every article I have ever written, and now it is the closing benediction over everything.

The song is a blessing, sung person to person around the room. I gave it to a single weathered baritone, spare and slow, a deliberate nod back to the Cash voice of Outside the Camp - because a benediction is not a crowd shouting, it is one voice blessing each face it can see. Grace and peace to you who came in grieving. Grace and peace to you the camp shut out. Grace and peace to you who sing it next, when our voices all have stilled. That last verse matters to me - the song hands the singing forward, to the ones who will carry it after the present voices are gone.

And the bridge keeps the blessing honest. The grace and peace we sing to you were never yours or mine. They come down from the Father, they come down through the Son. We are only passing on the blessing that the Lord has already done. Even the benediction is not ours to give - we just pass on what He has done. The whole catalog ends on the Aaronic blessing, and on the words I have always meant when I signed them. From the first of all our songs to the last, grace and peace.