Music Friday: Brandon Heath Seeks Divine Intervention to Set His 'Diamond' Free

Welcome to Music Friday when we like to shine the spotlight on inspirational songs with jewelry, gemstones or precious metals in the title or lyrics. Today, five-time Grammy nominee Brandon Heath seeks divine intervention in “Diamond,” his 2012 song about a young coal miner who "has only scratched the surface." He wants to be a better man, but needs God’s help to find the “diamond” buried deep inside.

He sings, “I got something down inside of me / That only You can see / Help me dig a little deeper now / And set that diamond free.”

For Heath, the diamond symbolizes the ability to bring his life to the next level — a life of clarity, not confusion, of compassion, not cruelty, of ambition, not excuses.

In the last lines of the song, Heath invites the Almighty to seek him out in the coal mine: “Come down with your old flashlight / Underground, black as night / No telling what you’re gonna find in me.”

“Diamond” is the fourth track on Heath’s fourth studio album, Blue Mountain. The album is unique because each song takes place in the Blue Mountains and is told from the point of view of a particular character. The real and fictional players featured in the songs include his grandfather, his mentor, a farmer, a coal miner and a death-row inmate. Each song weaves a message of hope, love and redemption.

When it was released in 2012, the album earned strong reviews and a #5 spot on Billboard‘s US Christian Albums chart. It also reached #97 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

“[The songs] are all kind of telling my story a little bit,” Heath revealed to The Clarion-Ledger. “[They talk] about my own fears, and my own desires. As a songwriter, it was more fun to give someone else my own voice. I think the best way to describe a place is to describe its people. And so, all these characters tell a story about what Blue Mountain is and who lives there.”

Born in Nashville, TN, Brandon Heath Knell turns 45 in July. The son of a police officer dad and hairdresser mom, Heath received his first guitar as a Christmas gift when he was 13. In high school, he converted to Christianity and explored his spirituality by participating in faith missions to India and Ecuador. Those trips helped inspire a career in contemporary Christian music.

Please check out the audio track of Heath performing “Diamond.” The lyrics are below if you’d like to sing along…

“Diamond”
Written by Brandon Heath, Ross Copperman and Lee Thomas Miller. Performed by Brandon Heath.

My father’s father broke this ground
Daddy mined till we laid him down
Only God knows what they found beneath

Now here I stand in my own boots
Ax to grind and a point to prove
Tangled up in my own roots, it seems

I got treasure up in Heaven
I got dirt all over me
I have only scratched the surface
Of the man I’m meant to be

I got something down inside of me
That only You can see
Help me dig a little deeper now
And set that diamond free

Why do I do the things I do
All the things that I don’t want to
Act like I don’t fear You at all

Hard head and a heart of stone
Older now but I haven’t grown
Any riches that I have to show are small

I got treasure up in Heaven
I got dirt all over me
I have only scratched the surface
Of the man I’m meant to be

I got something down inside of me
That only You can see
Help me dig a little deeper now
And set that diamond free

Set it free
Set it free
Set it free
Set it free

Come down with your old flashlight
Underground, black as night
No telling what you’re gonna find in me

Set it free
Set it free
Lord, set it free
Set it free
Come set it free

Set it free
I got treasure up in heaven

Set it free
I got dirt all over me

Set it free
I got treasure up in heaven

Come dig a little deeper now
And set that diamond free

Credit: Photo by David Holzemer, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Do Dying Stars Cast Off Gold and Platinum? The New Answer Is 'Yes' and 'No'

Back in October of 2017, thousands of astronomers from around the globe joined together to confirm the first-ever sighting of two neutron stars colliding in space. In just one second, the “kilonova” located 130 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra triggered the equivalent of 50 Earth masses of silver, 100 Earth masses of gold and 500 Earth masses of platinum.

The scientists estimated that the gold alone was worth more than $100 octillion. That’s $100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 followed by 29 zeroes).

The astronomers aimed their equipment at the super-dense kilonova, looking for the signatures of heavy metals. They recorded visible light, radio waves, X-rays and gamma rays. The data confirmed the birth of massive amounts of precious metals and seemed to put to rest the long-standing mystery of how these and other “heavy” elements are formed.

A newly published study, however, is challenging conventional wisdom and deepening the mystery.

Northwestern University researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to study a mammoth stellar collapse were stunned when they found absolutely no evidence of heavy elements.

The collapse, first registered on October 9, 2002, resulted in the brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever recorded. Scientists gave it the nickname B.O.A.T. (“brightest of all time”).

“When we confirmed that the GRB was generated by the collapse of a massive star, that gave us the opportunity to test a hypothesis for how some of the heaviest elements in the universe are formed,” said Northwestern’s Peter Blanchard, who led the study.

“We did not see signatures of these heavy elements, suggesting that extremely energetic GRBs like the B.O.A.T. do not produce these elements. That doesn’t mean that all GRBs do not produce them, but it’s a key piece of information as we continue to understand where these heavy elements come from. Future observations with JWST will determine if the B.O.A.T.’s ‘normal’ cousins produce these elements.”

“This event is particularly exciting because some had hypothesized that a luminous gamma-ray burst like the B.O.A.T. could make a lot of heavy elements like gold and platinum,” added second author Ashley Villar of Harvard University and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. “If they were correct, the B.O.A.T. should have been a gold mine. It is really striking that we didn’t see any evidence for these heavy elements.”

The findings were published last week in the journal Nature Astronomy.

According to a Northwestern University press release, the powerful B.O.A.T. explosion occurred approximately 2 billion light-years from Earth, in the direction of the constellation Sagitta and lasted a few hundred seconds. It was so bright that it saturated most of the world’s gamma-ray detectors.

“The event produced some of the highest-energy photons ever recorded by satellites designed to detect gamma rays,” Blanchard said. “This was an event that Earth sees only once every 10,000 years. We are fortunate to live in a time when we have the technology to detect these bursts happening across the universe.”

Credit: Image by Aaron M. Geller / Northwestern / CIERA / IT Research Computing and Data Services.

Kansas Baker Says Lost $4,000 Engagement Diamond May Be in a Cookie

A Kansas baker warned her customers on Facebook last week to bite down gently on cookies purchased from Sis’ Sweets Cookies and Café in Leavenworth. You see, the owner's engagement diamond fell out of her ring at some point between rolling the dough and placing the uncooked treats in the oven — so there's a chance the bauble was baked right into a batch.

Baker Dawn "Sis" Monroe broadcast her alert via the store's Facebook page on the morning of Friday, April 5, just after she prepared the day's cookie dough and scoured the prep area unsuccessfully for her precious keepsake.

"Bonus if you buy cookies today. My diamond is missing," she wrote on Facebook. "My heart is beyond broken. It’s been on my hand for 36 years. If you happened find it, I would forever be in debt if you would return it. It’s a marquise cut."

She was particularly concerned about the customer who might bite down onto the precious stone, which Monroe estimates to be worth $4,000.

”Mainly ‘cause I don’t want anybody to break a tooth,” Monroe told Kansas City ABC-affiliated KMBC.

Based on the variety of cookies she prepared that Friday morning, she is certain the diamond would be one of three batches: chocolate chip, sugar or peanut butter.

She also said there might be "a ton" of free cookies for the person who returns the diamond.

The baker told KMBC that her husband had picked out the marquise-cut center stone especially for her and that she hadn't take the ring off in 36 years.

“I was crying, and all [my husband] could say was, ‘You still have me,’ so that made it all better," Monroe said.

On Thursday, April 11, Cherokee Street neighbor First City Cheese Market injected some levity into a sad situation when proprietor Ryan popped into Sis’ Sweets Cookies and Café with a "diamond" cookie. Essentially, it was an Oreo with a diamond-shaped decoration protruding from the cream center.

Monroe shared a pic of Ryan and the cookie on Facebook and wrote, "Someone came in [and] brought me a cookie with a diamond in it. It’s a Topaz! We have great neighbors. We all work together to help each other!! Love our community, it’s the best! Thanks Ryan."

The baker added a final note about the missing diamond: "NO it still hasn’t been found."

As of Sunday evening, April 14, the diamond had yet to turn up. The story, on the other hand, has gone viral and circulated around the globe — delivering unmeasurable publicity to the Leavenworth baker.

Credit: Image by BigStockPhoto.com.