Through Different Eyes

Produced by Andy Seagle & Randy Thompson
copyright 1999 Randy Thompson Ministries, Inc. All rights reserved.

At the time I released my last album, 'Covenant", we had begun an annual tradition of doing a Christmas concert which we opened to anyone who wanted to come and celebrate Christmas with us (me and the band). It was kind of a neat gift that we could give to all those in the Phoenix area who had supported the ministry with gifts, prayers and bringing friends to the concerts. It was also a neat way for me to write about one of my favorite topics - Christmas. The first year I wrote 5 songs to go with two other previously recorded songs ('Christmas Song', and 'The Angels Sing') off of previous albums. The first 5 songs were - 'The Mother of the One' which is a song about Mary and the angel's announcement to her that she was to give birth to the Son of God, 'The Star' which was inspired by the story of the wisemen and their journey to find the King of Kings, 'The Gift of God' about how all creation groans together until now (a colaborative effort with Gordon Barr who wrote the music), 'Paradox' which speaks to the whole idea of infinity inhabiting the finite, and finally - 'Jesus Come' which was a prayer for His return. This last one was put on the last album at the last moment, and ended up being one of the more popular songs.

My whole intent wasn't to do a traditional Christmas album. (I have always said that I didn't want it to be 'Randy Thompson does "Perry Como does Christmas"'). I really wanted to try and break through some of the tradition and the stuff that has come to surround this event and see it again, if only in glimpses, the way it was. The third year we did the concert I added a song that I wrote in the 3 days prior to the concert and which has become the opening song on the album - 'We Want to See Jesus'. One of the lines also ended up becoming the title of the album and a simple way of expressing my desire in this whole project - to see this event that we are so familiar with 'Through Different Eyes'.