Story Behind The Song: Behold

 


The short version is that I was driving and worshipping one day in July 2020 when I started singing a new song. It felt like it was from the Lord but I wasn’t sure what to do about it because I don’t play an instrument and the odds of me being able to do anything with it seemed slim. A few weeks later, I shared it with David and he was able to figure out the cords behind the melody I was singing. And for about 8 months, we had a chorus and a verse and we didn’t really do anything with it. In March 2021, our friend Cam came to play through the song and help us figure out a potential bridge. I had a clear picture—like a literal image—in my mind of what the bridge was supposed to reflect but I didn’t know how to say it in any kind of frame that would resemble a bridge. So I explained the picture and in about 90 seconds, Cam played something and sang words that were absolutely perfect. So David, Cam, and I recorded Behold in the Bears’ living room for the first time in March of 2021. We held onto it for several months before including it in a worship set at Cobblestone. 

The longer version has such significance for me personally that I hesitate a little to share, but will in the hopes that it encourages you to know how beautifully the Lord can meet you in worship. That day in July, I was on the way to my mom’s hometown to go with her to lay flowers on my grandma’s grave for her birthday. My mom didn’t want to go alone and I thought it would be good to go with her. I was praying in the car on the way there, listening to and singing with worship music louder than it should have been, thinking about what it would be like to go back to this small town where I had experienced so many different emotions over the years. Truth be told, going back there was hard; it was a constant reminder of broken parts of my family that resulted in a lot of hurt. So I prayed. Mostly, I asked the Lord to fill my car, fill me, with Himself. The worship leader of the song that happened to be on in that moment started reading Revelation 5 and I couldn’t get past the verses that said “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed” (vs5) and “Then I saw the Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne” (vs6). 

This picture flooded my mind of what the scene might have looked like and I felt like I understood how John felt witnessing it: hopeless at the thought that no one would be worthy to open the scroll, but in a moment filled with awe at the first glimmer of hope and the sight of the Lamb. I started literally yelling to myself “Weep no more! Behold! Behold the Lion! Behold! The Lamb!” I kept repeating it, urging my own heart to see the hope and to realize why that hope was valid: He was slain and He rose. For the next hour, I got lost in that refrain. 

While my mom and I were at lunch after we visited the gravesite, we got a call from my uncle that my grandpa was in the hospital. After a few days of tests, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of liver cancer. 3 weeks later, I was on a plane to Phoenix, wondering if I would get there in time to say goodbye. I wept a lot that week. There had been a lot of brokenness in our relationship and I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle being there while he faded away. In a beautiful act of grace from the Lord, my grandpa and I were able to have a 1-on-1 conversation that ended in reconciliation, prayer, and forgiveness. He lost consciousness just after that and passed away the next day. 

I share all of that not as a sympathy play or to try to stir up some kind of emotion, but to tell you that this was a season that the Lord met me in my desperation, brokenness, hopelessness, and hurt (not to mention in the general chaos of 2020). And it wasn’t to ignore the realities of my situation, but it was Him drawing me to Himself. The elder in Revelation 5 didn’t tell John to get over it; he told John to look up. 

The first glimmer of hope in the hopelessness; that’s what I told Cam and David I saw for the bridge. It was like standing on a beach looking out over the ocean in the middle of the night and everything is pitch black. And then one little crack in the horizon, one first glimmer of light in the darkness, breaks through. Eventually, every knee would bow when they saw it and every tongue would confess that Jesus, the light of the world, broke through the darkness. 

A Lamb that was slain knows pain. A Lion knows how to rule. When I was in the middle of chaos, I found a very real hope in looking at Jesus, who knew the depth of my pain and was the only one able to conquer it. He was—and is—the stability, the hope, the comfort in both the known and unknown storms. He is the King, the Messiah, the Savior who is always holy, worthy, and mighty to save.

So weep no more—not because your situation isn’t important—because the Lion, the Lamb, the Worthy King, is here. Behold Him. It changes everything. 

Much Love,

Amanda 

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