Separating the devotional riches contained in Max Lucado's Traveling Light from the songs they inspired is like stripping the evergreen needles off of a freshly cut Christmas tree. It is clear that the two modes of expression fit together like hand in glove. What is not clear is which is the guiding hand and which is the warm, comforting glove.
Max Lucado is a modern-day messenger of simple truth, the type of truth that liberates the heavy-laden laborer and merrily manumits the spirit of every shackled servant. Having a keen understanding of human beings and their basic needs, Lucado bases his entire argument for psychological and spiritual streamlining on the 23rd Psalm, a handpicked scriptural passage that flows like a song. You don't read the 23rd Psalm, you partake of it. It is a felicific feast fit for a king. The exciting part is that you don't have to be a king to participate. All once-blind, twice-born citizens of the kingdom of God are invited to attend and partake of the feast. All are encouraged to help themselves to generous portions of the glorious promises it offers. Lucado and the musical messengers who generously offer their gifts on the accompanying CD compilation make the invitation to the feast absolutely irresistible.
The Lord is my shepherd
I shall not want.
According to German psychoanalytic theorist Erich Fromm, human want and human need go well beyond the organic instinctual drives to satisfy hunger, thirst, and sex. Yet these are the types of wants Lucado finds so many people in bondage to, wants that keep us locked up in what he referred to as "The Prison of Want." Moreover, the industrial revolution and the crass commercialism that has followed has intensified our craving to continually add to our biologically based longings an insatiable appetite for a mountain of material possessions. How sublimely streamlined a world we would live in if we all traded in our mountains of material possessions for the "Mountain of God" that Third Day's Mac Powell climbs so humbly, yet so confidently on the 5th and arguably pinnacle song of the Traveling Light CD. Lucado rightfully states that "Heaven does not know you as the fellow with the nice suit or the woman with the big house or the kid with the new bike. Heaven knows your heart." So for heaven's sake, we've got to stop filling the void within our social and spiritual selves with a surfeit of fleeting material possessions!
For Fromm, we are all primarily social beings with an inherent capacity for love. Yet our narcissistic, self-centered natures (often reinforced in childhood by less-than-perfect parenting) prevent us from being fulfilled in this area or from loving others the way they need to be loved. "For the sake of those you love, travel light," urges Lucado. "Just let your love flow," sang the Bellamy Brothers in a country crossover tune that took them to the top of the charts in the mid-seventies. But that flow will never grow if it is disconnected from the main reservoir, the vast, heavenly body of water that is God. That reservoir and its waters of everlasting life are more than subtly alluded to in the eighth track of the Traveling Light CD, a devotional duet called "Let it Flow," performed by Russ Taff and Jenna Lucado. The majestic music, psalm-basted lyrics and joyful voices offer peace like a river and praise like a fountain, soundly echoing Lucado's call to spiritual and psychological streamlining. If you like this number, try the traditional hymn, "Savior Like a Shepherd Lead Us," brought to new life by Fleming & John. Hearing this halcyon song is stopping by an old familiar brook that you used to visit as a child and finding, to your delight, that it is fresher and clearer than ever.
What I find most refreshing about Max Lucado's Traveling Light is that it avoids the pitfalls of over-pathologizing that many psychologists (myself included) succumb to. Furthermore, Traveling Light (Songs from the 23rd Psalm), performed by heavyweights of contemporary Christian music such as Amy Grant, Bryan White, Jaci Velasquez and Third Day's Mac Powell is every bit as refreshing in its avoidance of the circuitous route to divine wisdom. No, it is not the definitive answer to music's lost creative verve. Moreover, it does not take music in any particularly new direction. Neither do the lyrics signal the end of the dearth of creativity apparent in much of the music of the new millennium heretofore. Yet modern-day psalms like Bryan White's "I Shall Not Want" and Tait's "Following Me" are apt, potent anthems for the theme of unburdening introduced in Lucado's Traveling Light.
Even Christ-centered shrinks like myself have a tendency to mistrust seemingly obvious implications that arise from scriptural text, in search of something more complex and recondite. In order to draw substance and sustenance from this treatment of burden and its alleviation, I had to avoid the labyrinth and take the direct route to truth. I had to humbly suspend all premature judgments and conclusions before I could partake in the myriad blessings that this book and the CD inspired by it had in store for me. In short, I had no choice but to travel light.
As a young boy, I grew up attending a Sunday school at the now defunct North Park Bible church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. In Sunday school we would be singing lines like "I'm gonna lay down my burden, down by the riverside." When it was time to join the grown-ups in their service upstairs, we'd break into rousing refrains like "Burdens are lifted at Calvary." Yet, according to my perception at the time, the message of the minister rarely fit the refrain contained in the song. It made me wonder how free some of those pastors were. To this day I wonder how they could go through all those years of training in seminary and still not know how to spell relief. Some of them seemed to be more in the business of laying their own burdens down upon the congregation than offering relief. Then again, as Lucado puts it in his book, "How can you share grace if you are full of guilt? How can you offer comfort if you are disheartened? How can you lift someone else's load if your arms are full with your own?" In Traveling Light, Lucado teaches us clearly, not only how to lay down our burdens, but how to play a significant role in alleviating the burdens of our brothers and sisters in Christ. The best part about reading the book and then listening to the CD or vice versa is that, unlike my experience in church as a young boy, the revelation and the refrain are one and the same. The message and the music reinforce one another and complement one another in a confluence of transforming light and transcending truth.
Furthermore, Traveling Light (both the book and the music) introduce the reader to a philosophy of life that allows his/her mind, soul and psyche to realign via a powerful shift in perspective. Both mediums illuminate the reader so that he/she begins to see things that were always present but never seen or wholly appreciated before. With a newly discovered frame of reference, new solutions to old problems become appreciably apparent. The author gently, but persistently challenges our existing assumptions, prejudices, premature perceptual formulations, and automatic thought and behavioral patterns. Unwanted realities are no longer experienced as intrusions that we need to defend against. Our observing self reorganizes our world according to a new set of parameters that stretch the imagination and beckon us to actively explore new possibilities. Both mediums of Traveling Light introduce the reader to a reality governed by divine rules that surpass all human understanding. Each chapter in the book and each song on the CD make statements supporting and augmenting the statements of the other chapters/songs surrounding it. It is something both theologians and psychometric psychologists refer to as internal consistency.
There are many cynical skeptics out there who are without a prayer. These sneering cynics would haughtily dismiss these works as maudlin and/or simplistic in their treatment. Sadly, many of my colleagues sing the same cynical tune. I have sung it myself on days when I was overbooked and overpaid, days of gluttony when I was starving for truth and in dire need of a tune-up. But on sunny days like this, when God has touched my heart with the fine writings of a wise man, I am not the same. So I will abstain from that refrain. On this glorious day, when He has melted my heart with Max Lucado's unadorned words and the praiseful procession of his abundantly gifted, lighthearted musical companions, I have a sweeter song to sing. I feel light as a feather. The words and the music have given me wings and I think I'll try them out. I don't want to be bothered by the earnest entreats of those complicated creatures who would have me fix it. For my reply, I will resort to a trusted, if hackneyed, cliché, If it ain't broken, don't fix it! I would not alter, fix, nor mend it for I did befriend and now I defend it. I will now recommend it.
4 tocks
Other coverage for this album
The Phantom Tollbooth 2002Reviewed by Bert GanglThe parlaying of best-selling literary compositions into albums seems to be a fairly proliferative practice as of late, with texts as varied as Oswald Chambers' classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest and Bruce Wilkinson's contemporary best-seller, The Prayer of Jabez, receiving musical makeovers. Traveling Light, the fifth book by inspirational author Max Lucado to be set to music, stations…The Phantom Tollbooth 2002Reviewed by Josh McConnellTo some, various artist albums may be getting annoying; with the City On a Hill series, Essential's new God of Wonders album, and the list could go on. But others, like myself, enjoy having the selection of various artist recordings. And now you can add one more in that selection! Inspired by Max Lucado's book with the same name, Traveling Light is full of some familiar artists. With names like…
