All Together For Good

Ranking high in a lot of Christians' favourite passages is Romans 8, especially v.18 on.
Even more, v.31-39 — 'we are more than conquerors ... neither death nor life ... nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.'
And this supremely confident finish comes after heaps of questions: 'the sufferings of this present time', 'bondage to decay', 'the whole creation has been groaning', 'in our weakness'.
The list of dark things in this present time is long, but Paul asserts that 'all things work together for good'. And we find ourselves praying with him, and hoping 'for what we do not see'.
With the writer of Revelations we pray, we sing – 'Come, Lord Jesus, come!'
ALL TOGETHER FOR GOOD is to be the name of the sixth book in the series of songbooks I've helped produce over more than 25 years.
Apart from Romans 8, I'm not sure where the name first came from. It's been around since before the last one came out in 2001, and was one possible name for no.5.
Who knows! But one thing's for sure — it's a name that's open to meanings of various kinds .
We sing the songs together, for the good of the community,
and for those outside the church.
It's a permanent arrangement, not just a passing thing.

Jesus brings all of us, and everything, together. Like it says in Colossians 1 (great chapter!), 'in him all things hold together ... reconciling to himself all things .... by making peace through the blood of his cross.'
All Together - for good!

All Together Once More

'What colour will it be?'
'What's it going to be called?'
Whenever a new collection of songs in the All Together series is coming out, these appear to be the main questions, or at least, the first ones.
After that, 'what songs?' or 'what songwriters?'
(Nah, I made that last one up.
As the editor/compiler, & a songwriter, that's a question that I'm interested in having answered).
Had an email today with a suggestion for a future book.
It's one that's come up before: 'All Together Still'
I like it. It fits with both the style & the intent of these books. The 'All Together' name was just a name that seemed to fit when the first collection came out back in 1980. But over the years I've invested more meaning into it. Bringing all things together is what the work of Jesus is doing. Even when our eyes can't see it (more often than not), what 'all the king's horses & all the king's men' couldn't do, God does.

But for now it's all together once more, a promise that's already being kept, a hope that will be reality in the future.