Click Here To Read More Interviews

Known for his simple acoustic sound and profound lyrical style, Bebo Norman has opened his heart to his listeners through songs filled with hope and doubt, joy and sadness, light and dark. His new album, Big Blue Sky, is born out of the lessons he has learned about grace, the nature of God and his place in the world. Featuring the poetic lyrics his fans enjoy, the album also takes subtle departures from Bebo's signature rootsy guitar sound, a step that may bring his music to wider audience.

The shift for me has been more along the lines of pursuing righteousness. Don't pursue righteousness because of sin. Pursue righteousness because of grace. If I truly understood grace, it would drive me to want to be righteous. There have been a few moments in my life where I have felt grace on a very visceral gut level and really understood what grace was in a moment where I'd just screwed up but I felt fully forgiven. I didn't beat myself up. All I wanted to do in that moment was to never be in that moment again. All I wanted to do was pursue righteousness with everything that I had. When you really understand or believe what grace is, it makes us want to be righteous. But if we're ever living in response to sin, then sin is winning. If we're ever living like, "Oh crap, I screwed up again. I can't do that again" then we're trying to be righteous in response to evil rather than trying to be righteous in response to good. That's what the big thing for me has been. It becomes less of an action-reaction thing and more of a "This is what I am and that's what I'm going to do."

FamilyChristian.com: At the end of "All That I Have Sown" you end by saying "When they put me in the ground/There will remain a part of me/It's all that I have sown." Does it excite you to know that your music is planting seeds every day?

Bebo: I wrote that song about my grandfather. It's written from his perspective. I feel like I've begun to see a little bit of that perspective in relation to songs and feeling like there are seeds that are being planted, without overusing that cliché. There really are legitimate things that are going on in people's lives that are making a difference. Music has been a part of that and my music has been a part of that and to see that has been really amazing thing.

[I've watched] my grandfather pour his life into his family. I watched him cry at my grandmother's funeral. I watched him cry one year at Christmas. He had five kids and they've all had multiple kids and they have grandkids so [there are about] 50 people at our house on Christmas morning that are all directly [descended from] him. He was overwhelmed with that and he started crying. It was a blessing to see that and to feel even a tiny little bit of association with what he feels when he sees his family to what I feel when I see [my music affect people].

FamilyChristian.com: You come across as a pretty well read person. What are you reading now?

Bebo: There are a bunch of books I want to read right now. I'm not as adamant a reader as I want to be. I read plenty but I have friends that read me under the table. One thing I've been reading a lot lately is Annie Dillard's stuff. She's amazing. She's got a couple of books, one called Holy the Firm and one called Teaching a Stone to Talk. She'll take a common, everyday occurrence and have a take on it that literally digs into a spiritual life based on watching a moth burn in a candle or something really random. She's a Christian woman but people wouldn't call her a "Christian" writer. If you read her writing, there's no doubt that she is moved and consistently in awe over who God is and how He works in her life in the everyday. But she also has great questions and asks them. She's not afraid to say, "God, I don't get this part of You." That's a cool thing to me, to be able to be vulnerable like that.

I also just started reading a book by Philip Yancey called What's So Amazing About Grace? I've had a friend telling me to read it for years and I just never had gotten around to it. He blasts the church in a lot of ways for our tendency not to offer grace but he's also acknowledging that the church is where grace is going to have to come from. The church is foundational for providing grace to the culture. While he's blasting the church, he's also supporting the church and saying, "We need to get it together." It's a really cool perspective.

FamilyChristian.com: Can you reflect on the two years since Ten Thousand Days was released and share some of the places God has taken you?

Bebo: I feel like I'm in a different place in my life in a lot of ways. Music is not new to me anymore in terms of doing it for a living. I started doing it full time in 1996-97. Going on a spring tour and a fall tour and doing some dates in the summer, that's all part of what my normal life feels like.

I don't feel like I've "made it" in music or gone to the pinnacle of anything but I certainly feel very happy with where things are musically. [The fact] that this is my job freaks me out. The weird thing is getting to a place where now I say, "This is normal. This feels good."

In the last year I've realized that even though music makes me happy and even though doing this for a living makes me happy, those things don't fulfill what I want to be filled with. [It's] required me, in the last couple of years, to really dig in more spiritually. That sounds so cliché and worn out but that has been the thing that has overwhelmed me in the last year or so. The grace of God is overwhelming. [It's strange] to be in a position where you're playing for people and people are listening to what you say and then realize that I'm still the same idiot that I've always been. I still cycle through the same sins that I've been struggling with for years. The reality of that and the fact that I feel very normal doing music now reminds me that my life, regardless of where it goes, means jack to me if there's not something that reminds me that I am good in the eyes of God. Being good in the eyes of men, in other words, has been a wonderful thing but it doesn't fill me up. It's a great thing to hear people cheer but it doesn't make me a happy person.

Big Blue Sky by Bebo Norman

In the last couple years, [I've realized] the extreme depth of grace from God is huge enough to cover us up. That's [the theme of] Big Blue Sky as a song and as a title. The whole idea is that I don't have a whole lot to offer anybody but that doesn't matter. The sky is still blue. God is still God.

There's so many different things written about world religions and what makes Christianity different. There are other world religions that talk about incarnation. There are other ones that talk about somebody being raised from the dead or healing or whatever. The one [thing] that no other religion talks about is grace-God pursuing us with no strings attached at all, not us pursuing God.

Either we get so arrogant to think that we can fix people [and] give people all this great stuff or we're so insecure because we struggle with the same sins that we've battled for years. Most people live in those two extremes when they're really in their gut level dealing with who they are. Grace covers both of those things. Grace knocks me on my butt when I need to be knocked on my butt. Grace is not just fixing it when I've done something wrong; grace is knocking me down when I'm getting too puffed up. Even when God takes my feet out from under me-I think that's so graceful and beautiful. That's been huge to me-really understanding the bigness of God.

Kevin McNeese , a writer in Grand Rapids, Mich., conducted this interview for FamilyChristian.com.

Back To Top

Click Here To Read More Interviews

Corporate Informations:
About Family Christian Stores® |  Jobs
Information / Official Logos For Business Partners / Suppliers

© 2008 Family Christian Stores®, Inc.