Taste and See

Taste and See has to be my favorite track on this album. This song tackles the goodness of God. God is good in everything that He does. He cannot not be good. I love this song just because these past few weeks, I've been repeating those same words to myself. God is good. It's a phrase that's pulled me through many stuff that has happened. God is good no matter what happens.
Shai talks about how God's goodness is seen in everything. "From rocks and minerals to toxic chemicals" the goodness of God is seen in all of this. He goes on to mention that God's goodness can be seen from the beginning of history. Even though Adam and Eve left "us in a greasy condition with slezy addictions but Jesus' afflictions free those believing He's risen". Even though Adam and Eve condemned humanity to a lifetime of suffering and pain, God demonstrated His goodness by allowing His Son to come down to earth and die for the sins of everybody.
Shai demonstrates a mastery over the lyrics in this track as he keeps a rhyme going on for about half a verse before switching over to another one. While listening to this song, I am truly reminded that God is good in all that He does.

The Glory of God (Not To Us)

The Glory of God was the first single released off of the album. It was released back in July, several months before the album came out. I love this song simply because all of it is about the glory of God. Nothing points to anybody else but God here.
The song starts off with the creation and how it all points to God's glory. Only God could pull off something so majestic as creating an entire universe out of nothing. To God alone belongs all the glory because of who He is.
Although the song doesn't mention it outright, there is another issue that came to mind as I listened to it. How humans often try to take the glory that belongs to God and redirect it at ourselves. Satan was cast out of heaven for trying to ascend to God's throne. In short, he wanted the glory that God received for himself. And out of this original sin, comes every other type of sin.
When we sin, we tell God that we believe we can do better than He can. We wish to bring the glory to ourselves so that people may be in awe of us. We love when people praise us or tell us that we're good at something. Just like Adam and Eve in the garden, a part of us wants to be like God. We want people always telling us how good we are or what an excellent job we did at something.
However, although there is nothing wrong with being praised for doing a good job on something, when that becomes the focus of our being is when it turns into something wrong. When everything we do is so that people tell us how amazing we are, we are merely seeking glory for its own sake.
Psalm 115:1 reminds us that the glory should always go to God. God alone is worthy of all glory. His presence itself should inspire us to always give glory to Him. We must remember that God is a jealous god and He shares His glory with none.

The Perfection of Beauty

So it's winter break and I decided since I have a bit more time on my hands, I'm going to go through every track on shai linne's The Attributes of God and review each track. So today I'll be starting with the first one.
The Perfection of Beauty is a spoken word piece by Shai's wife, Blair Linne. This is the only track to have a video to it since it was first released as a trailer to the whole album.
In this track, Blair talks about the beauty of God. She shows how we, as a culture, make beauty into something very shallow. We only care about what's on the outside but all beauty fades away. However, the beauty of God never fades away and when earthly views on beauty are compared to God, it all looks ugly. She goes on to tell us that beauty comes from within. It comes from a mind that is sanctified. A mind that walks with God. Although we can never hope to equal the beauty of God, we can rid ourselves of a vain view on what beauty is and aspire towards reaching the beauty of God.
I loved the concept of the spoken word piece. As a culture, we often place a lot of emphasis on external beauty. We idolize celebrities and models because of their looks. Magazines are always shouting on their covers ways to lose weight or to look sexier. The thing is though, that the standard of beauty is always changing. No matter who you are, you're never going to be that picture perfect air brushed model.
There's nothing wrong with trying to lose some weight or wanting to look better, but when that becomes the main point to your existence, then it becomes idolatry. And God warns us to turn away from all types of idolatry. True beauty will shine through when we become more like Christ. Earthly beauty fades away but the beauty that comes from Christ remains forever. We must be careful to not let our perception of what beautiful is come from what the culture tells us beauty is. When we allow that to happen, issues like low self-esteem and depression start to appear as we realize that we don't fit into what "beauty" is and try to mold our bodies to that image. God loves us the way we are because He made us the way we are.