Edited by Jim McCrory, Saturday 17 January 2026 at 12:41
Another Sun Will Rise
When I listen to the music, I listen for what lies beneath the song lyrics. It's a legacy from studying English Literature I suppose. I have no time for the repetitive lyrics that leave one uncomfortably numb. But rather, songs with narrative depth; songs that carry story, memory, and truth. The kind you find in Paul Simon’s Under African Skies or Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes or the scarred, streetwise poetry of Fairytale of New York. Songs that know joy and grief often share the same breath.
One with deep existential thought I return to often is In Search of Angels by Runrig.
Like poetry, when it is out there, each person brings in their memory and experience and that shapes the poem into something deeper than what the poet may not have anticipated. But that’s the shared experience. And so it goes with In Search of Angels.
At first listen, it feels like a song of longing—a restless, watchful piece shaped by a world that is clearly fractured. Certainties have worn thin, institutions disappoint, history feels heavy. The “angels” being searched for are not obvious or spectacular. They are quiet signs of goodness: people who still choose compassion, moments where grace flickers briefly and refuses to be extinguished.
But the song doesn’t stay entirely within the human frame.
There is a line that shifts everything: another sun will rise.
That sentence is not poetic filler. It is theological ballast. It suggests that despite the brokenness on display, something deeper is still intact. The world may bruise itself endlessly, but it has not spun loose from its axis. The sun rises not because humanity deserves it, but because the universe is still being held.
This brings to mind the Bible character Job who raised questions about God’s permission of evil when he said in Job 24:1,
“Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment? Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?”
God’s reply in Job 38:4,12, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you understand.”
And later: “Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place?”
The God of creation—the One who keeps the clocks of the universe running even when the moral clocks on earth falter gives Job reassurance. The rising sun becomes evidence, not that everything is right, but that meaning has not evaporated. Order remains. Faithfulness persists at a level deeper than politics, pain, or progress.
God continues in Job 38:11. “This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt.”
God is reminding Job that by pointing to the sea and implying the forces he fears obey a boundary he has set. We should have confidence that our mind has walls and limits and this is not the time for full divine revelation about suffering.
In this light, the search for angels is not a desperate hope against chaos; it is a search within a sustained world. Angels may still appear as people and moments, but they are also written into the fabric of creation itself: light returning, days beginning again, promises quietly kept.
What gives the song its power is its restraint. The songwriters don’t preach this into the listener. They let the image stand, almost observational—like someone stepping outside at dawn in the Scottish Hebridean island of Uist, half-expecting darkness to have finally won, and finding instead that the day has arrived once more.
The music mirrors this humility. It doesn’t rush toward triumph. It walks. Slowly. As if it understands that some truths are too steady to shout.
In Search of Angels ultimately feels like a song for those who refuse both despair and cheap optimism. It acknowledges the wounds of the world while daring to suggest that they are not the final reality. That beneath the noise and damage, there is a God who keeps the universe turning—and who leaves signs of that faithfulness scattered like breadcrumbs for those willing to look at another sun rising.
Another Sun Will Rise
Another Sun Will Rise
When I listen to the music, I listen for what lies beneath the song lyrics. It's a legacy from studying English Literature I suppose. I have no time for the repetitive lyrics that leave one uncomfortably numb. But rather, songs with narrative depth; songs that carry story, memory, and truth. The kind you find in Paul Simon’s Under African Skies or Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes or the scarred, streetwise poetry of Fairytale of New York. Songs that know joy and grief often share the same breath.
One with deep existential thought I return to often is In Search of Angels by Runrig.
Like poetry, when it is out there, each person brings in their memory and experience and that shapes the poem into something deeper than what the poet may not have anticipated. But that’s the shared experience. And so it goes with In Search of Angels.
At first listen, it feels like a song of longing—a restless, watchful piece shaped by a world that is clearly fractured. Certainties have worn thin, institutions disappoint, history feels heavy. The “angels” being searched for are not obvious or spectacular. They are quiet signs of goodness: people who still choose compassion, moments where grace flickers briefly and refuses to be extinguished.
Runrig – In Search Of Angels Lyrics | Genius Lyrics
But the song doesn’t stay entirely within the human frame.
There is a line that shifts everything: another sun will rise.
That sentence is not poetic filler. It is theological ballast. It suggests that despite the brokenness on display, something deeper is still intact. The world may bruise itself endlessly, but it has not spun loose from its axis. The sun rises not because humanity deserves it, but because the universe is still being held.
This brings to mind the Bible character Job who raised questions about God’s permission of evil when he said in Job 24:1,
“Why does the Almighty not set times for judgment?
Why must those who know him look in vain for such days?”
God’s reply in Job 38:4,12,
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Tell me, if you understand.”
And later:
“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place?”
The God of creation—the One who keeps the clocks of the universe running even when the moral clocks on earth falter gives Job reassurance. The rising sun becomes evidence, not that everything is right, but that meaning has not evaporated. Order remains. Faithfulness persists at a level deeper than politics, pain, or progress.
God continues in Job 38:11.
“This far you may come and no farther;
here is where your proud waves halt.”
God is reminding Job that by pointing to the sea and implying the forces he fears obey a boundary he has set. We should have confidence that our mind has walls and limits and this is not the time for full divine revelation about suffering.
In this light, the search for angels is not a desperate hope against chaos; it is a search within a sustained world. Angels may still appear as people and moments, but they are also written into the fabric of creation itself: light returning, days beginning again, promises quietly kept.
What gives the song its power is its restraint. The songwriters don’t preach this into the listener. They let the image stand, almost observational—like someone stepping outside at dawn in the Scottish Hebridean island of Uist, half-expecting darkness to have finally won, and finding instead that the day has arrived once more.
The music mirrors this humility. It doesn’t rush toward triumph. It walks. Slowly. As if it understands that some truths are too steady to shout.
In Search of Angels ultimately feels like a song for those who refuse both despair and cheap optimism. It acknowledges the wounds of the world while daring to suggest that they are not the final reality. That beneath the noise and damage, there is a God who keeps the universe turning—and who leaves signs of that faithfulness scattered like breadcrumbs for those willing to look at another sun rising.
In Search of Angels (Live at Stirling 2018)Image by Copilot