Single Eye - BTL
At the time of the posting of this blog, both the original and the "recharged" version of this song will be available for listening. I will include videos of both in this post. While they are different in many respects, the spirit behind them is the same.
The concept and the title of this song comes from Matthew 6:22-23 (King James Version):
"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore your eye be single, your whole body shall be full of light. But if your eye be evil, your whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness!"
What Jesus is talking about is our focus. Simply put, if we focus on the wrong things, they will influence where our lives go. From the things we allow to entertain us to what we allow to shape our perspective, they all sum up to the direction we steer our lives in and it's important that what influences us is the truth!
I don't have a super philosophical except to present you with, just that it makes sense to seek after the God who is capable of coordinating millions of things at once. As we get to know Him, he'll direct us on how to manage our lives, making us all the more effective in this life.
I wrote the lyrics to this song using other scriptures and analogies to communicate this concept. Some of these include...
- Matthew 18:9 ("And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away.")
- Paralleling our focus ("tunnel vision") with crawling through a tunnel underground.
- A wide lens (focusing on a bunch of things at once) allows unwanted things into our lives (or "invaders").
When it came to the imagery used in the lyric video for the recharged version, the stock footage of busy city streets is meant to give off an air of lives that are cluttered with so much to do; often we allow an excessively busy life to distract us from what is important. The inclusion of people scrolling on their smartphones was to further the theme of distraction, seeing that it is our society's favorite pass time. These two themes together with the shots of fences and barb wire are to say that what we spend our time and attention on can become our prison if we are not careful.
These lyrics are the most cryptic I've ever written, and honestly it was fun crafting them in a way I haven't done before.
Until next time... FireBrand, out!