Aaron and Amanda Crabb “Mercy” Album Review

No seminary or Bible College prepares us to minister with more pastoral sensitivity than the school of hard knocks.  Suffering offers us a first-class tutelage that affects us beyond the cognitive.  By God's mercy, sufferings can often soften us to be more malleable towards God and His Word; as a result, our entire being changes.  We begin to exude affectibility towards God and hurting that is more compassionate, loving and contagious.  This is the impression one gets when listening to Aaron and Amanda Crabb's "Mercy."  The Crabbs themselves have seen their own share of sufferings.  On the night of the 2009 Dove Awards, while Aaron and Amana Crabb were driving to the show, Amanda received a shocker of a call from their nanny.  Their 2 year-old daughter Eva had just fallen off a 15-feet high two storey window; she had landed on an air-conditioned unit below covered entirely in blood. When fellow artist and friend Donnie McClurkin received the news, in the middle of the Dove Awards, he even paused to pray for Eva and the Crabb Family.

After a tumultuous time of having to witness their two year-old screaming in a bloody mess, Aaron and Amanda had to hold on to Eva so that a proper CT scan could be administered.  By God's grace, Eva not only did not suffer any broken bones or internal injuries, she looked like she was just scarped herself falling on the sidewalk.  Yet, the experience was monumental in the spiritual formation of the couple's lives.  And such an added heft of spiritual gravitas is heard right through these songs especially the album opener "If I'm Guilty."  Setting the theme of the record "If I'm Guilty" is a propulsive country-flavored toe-tapper that finds Aaron basking in God's unending mercy.  Mercy empties its emotional quotient on Jeff Ferguson and Reggie Stone's "God Loves the Broken."  The crackles in Amanda's falsetto pack so much punch that we can't help but fight back our tears as she wrestles with us in our desperation for God.

"Guide Me," one of 6 songs written or co-written by the Crabb couple, is a gorgeous piano cum strings ballad that has both the vintage charm of a hymn and the contemporary nuances of a power ballad. Being worship leaders at John Hagee's San Antonia's Cornerstone Church, the Crabb allow us to see them in action with the worship anthem "Holy."  Though "Holy" is not really earth shattering, it's good to see them stepping out of their bounds to tackle something different.   But remember to schlep an umbrella when the Crabbs step into the shoes of the prophet Elijah in calling for rain in the midst of a drought on the Gospel infused "It's Gonna Rain." This is indeed a mountain-moving song at its best.  Never parochial, producers Ben Isaacs and Aaron Crabb have even serviced "I'm Learning," a paean to self improvement and betterment, to contemporary country radio.

Inspired by their trip to Israel where after Amanda prayed for inspiration at the Western Wall, "Take Him to the Place" was born.  Never relegating the Cross and the resurrection of Jesus as a mere event in history, "Take Him to the Place" is a beautiful illustration of how Christ can still transform the dead things in our lives back to life.   "Mercy" in many ways is like Aaron and Amanda Crabb's own diary set to music.  In the light of what they had been through over the last few years, you can hear their struggles, their season of drought and their own frustrations.  But on this record, you will also witness how they have overcome with God's mercy, God's provision of rain and how through the resurrection of Christ brings dead things back to life.  

 

 

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