Contemporary Christian singer-songwriter Mark Harris, who has released some of Christian music’s most moving songs, including the guaranteed tearjerker Find Your Wings and the encouraging Nothing Takes You By Surprise, has released his first album in over two years, the emotionally charged Stronger in the Broken Places. The 11-track album contains some of Harris’ most personal work to date, the product of a new season in his life – he is worship pastor at his local church – and soul-searching in pursuit of God’s work in his own life. The eight-time Dove Award winner and former 4Him singer says he delighted in the opportunity to invest time in those around him and to learn from others whose life callings are markedly different from his. He says patience was integral to the birth of Stronger in the Broken Places, as he allowed God to lead with Harris’ artistic aspirations subject matter. “I felt strongly that He wanted me to take my time and that He wanted to give me direction,” Harris says, “and as I trusted him, I felt the Holy Spirit ushering me and my music in to this totally different season. He has really refreshed and reinvigorated my desire to write and my desire to touch people through music.”
According to this blog entry on Harris’ website, Stronger in the Broken Places is inspired by God’s faithfulness and presence at the times when we are weak. “Doctors say that it is unlikely that a bone can break in the same place twice, because when it heals, it is stronger than before. We all get bent by the storms of life, at times we even break, and when we are broken, God is there with us, always there to mend us, to heal us, and when we heal, we find that the trial and the storm has made us stronger…. stronger than before!”
I will link to Stronger In The Broken Places as soon as it is available on YouTube; meanwhile, the lyrics of Stronger in the Broken Places follows.
STRONGER IN THE BROKEN PLACES Lyrics
Mark Harris
Light shines the brightest
In the moment of our desperation
Hope somehow rises
Through the rubble of our desolation
There’s a calm in the storm
Though the winds around us rage
So I hold to the truth
You will bring me through
The darkest of my days
There is beauty in the suffering
Hope can heal what hurt embraces
Through it all I know you’re making me
Stronger in the broken places
