Heritage Singers - We Are The Reason Lyrics
Lyrics
As little children we would dream of Christmas morn
And all the gifts and toys we knew we’d find
But we never realized a baby born one blessed night
Gave us the greatest gift of our lives
We are the reason that he gave His life
We are the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live
As the years went by we learned more about gifts
Giving of ourselves and what that means
On a dark and cloudy day a man hung crying in the rain
Because of love
Because of love
We are the reason that he gave His life
We are the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live
I finally found the reason for living
It’s in giving every part of my heart to Him
In all that I do, every word that I say
I’ll be giving my all just for Him, for Him
We are the reason that he gave His life
We are the reason that He suffered and died
To a world that was lost He gave all He could give
To show us the reason to live
He is my reason to live
Video
Heritage Singers / "We Are The Reason"
Meaning & Inspiration
The Heritage Singers’ rendition of this track hits that strange, uncomfortable nerve that only mid-tempo choral numbers can. When we’re putting a set list together, there’s always a temptation to go for the big, anthemic crescendo. But songs like this pull us back into the room, forcing a quieter, more personal inventory of what we actually believe happens at the altar.
The lyric that always catches in my throat is: “On a dark and cloudy day a man hung crying in the rain / Because of love.”
Most of our contemporary writing leans toward the triumph of the empty tomb, which is vital, but it often glosses over the grit of the middle. This line doesn't offer a clean theological abstraction. It gives us a man—exhausted, exposed to the elements, weeping. It forces the congregation to stop thinking about the theology of atonement for a second and just look at the vulnerability of the Savior.
There’s a tension here that I think we miss when we sing it too quickly. We like to move fast from the suffering to the redemption, but the song asks us to linger in the rain. It aligns, in a way, with the agony in the garden or the dereliction on the cross found in Matthew 27. It’s not meant to be a comfortable sing-along. It’s an observation of a cost that feels entirely disproportionate to the benefit we receive.
Then, the chorus hits: “We are the reason that he gave His life.”
If I’m honest, I sometimes struggle with the mechanics of that line. It can easily veer into a self-centered narrative—the idea that we are the protagonists of the divine drama. But if you strip away the performance and look at the singability, it functions as a mirror. If the congregation sings that and feels only pride, we’ve missed the mark. If they sing it and feel the weight of their own fragility—the realization that they were the ones who put Him there—then the song does its work.
The landing isn't a neat resolution. It ends with a shift from the corporate “we” to the singular “He is my reason to live.”
That’s where the liturgy catches up with the individual. You can lose yourself in a choir, but you can’t hide in that final cadence. The truth left hanging in the air is that the exchange—the suffering in the rain for our existence—isn't a debt we pay back. It’s an orientation we adopt. We walk out of the room not having "finished" a song, but having acknowledged that our entire output of breath, words, and choices is just a reaction to that initial act of love. Whether or not we actually live that way the next morning is the part that remains, quite frankly, a little unfinished.