In Sandra McCracken’s new book, Send Out Your Light: The Illuminating Power of Scripture and Song, you’ll find the same depth of spiritual insight and emotion that characterizes her songs. She writes:

If we sing songs with thin ideas, superficial hopes, and more hype than authenticity, we will find ourselves depleted in the times when we need some truth to fall back on. We need songs sturdy enough to sing at the bedside of a dying friend.

That’s what Sandra has done for me, with her whole Psalms album and with songs such as “We Will Feast in the House of Zion” and “Steadfast” in particular. They’re better than nostalgia, which she describes as a ghost. They point me to God, who is love. “Love is love,” Sandra writes, “backwards and forwards. You can take it with you, and it is not bound by time.”

Sandra joined me on Gospelbound to discuss embodied worship, tortured artists, the Nashville sound, deconstruction, and more. I couldn’t help myself from quoting her book several times in the interview. You’ll want to hear Sandra describe how the darkness in her life over the last decade has changed the trajectory of her career and outlook as an artist.