Songs for Lent #5: Rez Band's "Someone Sleeps Tonight"

For a band living in an intentional Evangelical community called Jesus People USA, this song is peculiarly non-Evangelical, even non-American in its political outlook. As a lyricist, I was honored to be part of the team that wrote this. Today, its final lines are the ones I cannot forget. Lord, please... help us as believers not to unwittingly become party to the abuse of the powerless at the hands of the powerful.

Someone Sleeps Tonight - REZ Band

Yellow moon rise
And the shadows are so long
Comes as no surprise
I hear another night song
And the echoes
In those hills
A random rhythm
The silence fills

And someone deals in pain
And someone deals in power
And someone sleeps tonight (forever)

Ragged children left to play
Fear, then hear the sound
Run, run, oh run away
Stumbling feet on dusty clay
In the rockets glaring red
A weeping mother hangs her head
'Cause someone sleeps tonight, forever

And someone deals in pain
And someone deals in power
And someone sleeps tonight (forever)

And in the flames' inferno
Consuming human flesh and soul
Innocence becomes a stranger
Despair a burning coal
An old man's eyes are vacant
His callused hand is open, still
Children wander in the ruins
Where grief roams, never filled

Sometimes at night they hear
The wind of a past they cannot change
And in the morning silence
Tell me what goodness will remain?
The bitter cup is filled once more
A bloody history paints this land
They try to seal a tomb that's empty
While they build the cross again

And someone deals in pain
And someone deals in power
And someone sleeps tonight (forever)
And someone deals in pain
And someone deals in power
And someone sleeps tonight (forever)
Forever.... Forever... Forever... Forever...
Forever.