Andrew Peterson – ‘Resurrection Letters: Prologue’ album review

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In the light and dark of human history, two moments are the darkest: The Fall of Man, when Adam and Eve invited sin into the world and hid themselves from the living God, and the Fall of God, when that same living God allowed himself to become death so that we might hide ourselves no longer. But, oh!, the sorrow of those three days—the darkest of days—between the crucifixion and the resurrection.

A decade ago, Andrew Peterson released Resurrection Letters, Volume Two (buy). There was no Volume One. The title was more than a tease; Peterson realized the songs were more about the impact of the resurrection on our lives than the event itself. But then, the first volume never came. Granted, it is a daunting subject for a songwriter, but if any songwriter is up to the task, it’s Andrew Peterson, whose Behold The Lamb Of God (buy) is one of the finest takes on the incarnation you’ll hear. So, ten years on, Peterson releases Volume One. Wait, and a Prologue (buy)?

It is not enough to write only about the resurrection without pondering the cross. The celebration of Easter Sunday is earned through the sorrow of Good Friday. Those darkest of days deserve our attention, and here they have it. Resurrection Letters: Prologue is a five-song EP of profound emotion. The collection opens with a haunting recitation of the last words of Christ spoken while he hung on the cross. These are followed by the finest poetry Peterson has written, set to a cinematic soundscape sometimes appropriately sparse and sometimes jarringly hopeful. Peterson brings us alongside the disciples, to help us mourn and to allow us to dare to wonder if the stories of resurrection might really be true. And that’s where it ends—with a full stop, and the tantalizing hope that the darkness is not the end of all things, but a Sabbath.

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