Exclusively premiering today with NewReleaseToday, Stu Garrard and John Mark McMillan are releasing the lyric video for their song "Heaven Is Around Us" from The Beatitudes Project album. Check out the new video below.
The song was inspired by today's meek - the marginalized, the displaced and people Garrard describes as "those we see as the other." The song is available Friday, March 24 for immediate download with pre-order of the Beatitudes album from iTunes. This album releases April 21 and is a part of The Beatitudes Project (#TheBeatitudesProject), which is also a book, Words From The Hill (An Invitation to the Unexpected) from NavPress releasing in April, and a documentary film, View From the Hill, currently in production. The project is meant to be a reset button in a world plagued with violence and division.
"When Stu approached me about The Beatitudes Project I was stoked," remembers McMillan, who later connected with Stu to write "Heaven Is Around Us" together in his hometown of Charlotte, NC. "The song started to form about the meek and this idea that the things that are blessed are not always what we think are blessed.... I think Jesus is speaking to the idea that what we consider successful and what He considers successful are not the same thing."
Stu Garrard says, "One of the first songs to be written and recorded [for Beatitudes] was 'Heaven Is Around Us' with John Mark McMillan. It was such a fantastic experience and an honor for me. It's one of the 'Meek' themed songs, and we explored the idea of the meek being those from whom power has been taken away. The bullied, the marginalized, the oppressed..."the other" and If that's you, then God is on your side. When John Mark started singing 'Lift your head up high' I knew this was one of the key moments and messages of #TheBeatitudesProject."
