NewSong - It's A Wonderful Life Lyrics

Video

Hurts - Wonderful Life (New Version - Official Video)

Meaning & Inspiration

NewSong’s take on the "wonderful life" has a bounce to it that’s hard to ignore, but standing here in the back of the room, I find myself checking the exits. They’re singing about how "no rainy day could ever stop this party" and how "God has started in my soul," and I’m trying to picture that sentiment landing in a hospice ward or a courtroom during a bankruptcy hearing.

It’s easy to feel "light as a feather" when the sky is clear, but life isn’t usually a sunny day in Bedford Falls. The song leans on that classic It’s a Wonderful Life imagery, but real life rarely offers George Bailey’s tidy realization that you’ve mattered to everyone you’ve touched. Sometimes you spend years trying to do the right thing and it feels like you’ve touched absolutely nothing but a brick wall.

The lyric that sticks in my throat is, "It makes a sad heart sing." I look at the Psalms—specifically Psalm 88, which is basically the sound of someone screaming into a void—and I don’t see much singing there. Heman the Ezrahite says his acquaintances have been taken away and he’s been "shut in, so that I cannot escape." His soul is full of troubles, and the end of the chapter doesn't offer a sunny resolution. He ends in darkness.

If this song is the "truth," what do we do with the people who are genuinely trying to live for the Lord but still feel like they’re drowning? Is their faith smaller? Or is the "wonderful life" promised here something entirely different from the absence of suffering?

I want to believe the chorus. I really do. But when the house is silent and the bank account is empty, "wonderful" feels like a word from a different language. If we equate the Christian life solely with a "wonderful" feeling, we’re setting ourselves up for a crash the moment the clouds roll in. Faith isn't a sunny day; it’s the stubborn refusal to let go of the line when the storm is actually hitting the boat.

Maybe the "wonderful" part isn't the feeling of lightness, but the fact that God stays in the boat even when the singing stops. I’m not sure I can shout this one from the rooftops yet. I might just stay here in the back, arms crossed, trying to figure out how to sing when the heart is genuinely, stubbornly, and rightfully sad. The song is a nice sentiment, but it’s a long way from the trenches.