Liner notes · Renewed

The discipline is the gentleness.

Renewed (2024) is our response record — recorded, like all eight, across a single weekend and in a single key. We made it as a soft answer to a loud year. The discipline of the album is its gentleness: every choice on it — the key we refused to change, the volume we refused to raise, the blessing we now offer LitBlimp by name — is a decision not to be provoked into noise. What follows are the liner notes we would read aloud at the potluck, one track at a time, if you brought a chair and stayed for decaf.

• ✚Track 1 · "Renewed" — We wrote the opening hymn in answer to a louder record released the same year. We answered softly. That was the point, and the whole of the sermon.
• ✚Track 2 · "A Gentle Reply" — Some answers are arguments. This one is a casserole left on a doorstep. Both feed people; only one expects the dish returned.
• ✚Track 3 · "Steady in One Key" — We never modulate. A changed key asks for attention. Staying put is a small daily obedience, and we offer it as praise.
• ✚Track 4 · "Carson, in Love" — Written for our neighbors down the freeway — LitBlimp, since we say the name now — and we mean every blessing in it, their gas mileage included.
• ✚Track 5 · "The Folding Chair" — There is always one more chair than there are people. The empty seat is the prayer; the meditation is who you choose to leave it open for.
• ✚Track 6 · "Thirty-One to the Gallon" — A thanksgiving for the minivan. Efficiency is a quiet kind of stewardship, and stewardship is a quiet kind of worship.
• ✚Track 7 · "Until the Gas Runs Out" — The closing benediction. We keep going gently, on our own fuel and not theirs, until the tank or the Lord says otherwise.

Album devotional · Renewed (2024). Bring a folding chair. More devotionals to follow, one album at a time.