Send me a message out of the wreckage.

“If you don’t give up on faith / Then you won’t give up on you.” A message in a bottle, washing up on the shore at sunset — that’s the song. A message of hope, cast out into the world, waiting to be found by the one who needs it.

“Send me a message / Out of the wreckage / I’ll spread your message to the world.” The message doesn’t come from a perfect place — it comes out of the wreckage. When you’re lost and tired, when you’ve strayed along the way, the message still finds you. And once it does, you don’t keep it — you spread it. “Of hope and love and truth.”

“But it’s not enough to say / That I believe, and walk away.” This is the challenge at the center of the song. Belief on its own isn’t enough — faith has to be lived. “Now we all can find our place / If we live our life / Through his grace.” The grace is what carries you, and living through it is what gives you your place.

“Now we all can find the strength / When we’re lost and tired we’ll pull through.” Nobody gets through unscathed — “Now we all stray along the way.” But the strength is there for all of us, and pulling through is the point. The message is for anyone who’s lost, anyone waiting to know they’re not alone. “It’s in the message.”

Franklin McKay and Harry Hess wrote it in 2019 — a thoughtful, earnest Adult Contemporary song in the rock Christian vein of “A World of Pretenders.” If you love MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine” or Casting Crowns, this one’s for you.