Flying from Houston to Miami during the hurricane season is not my idea of fun. Once we were up in the air the pilot informed us, three or four times, that he was expecting turbulence. I kinda felt that once was probably enough. We were instructed to remain within our seatbelts. And while I had the additional advantage of being wedged into United Economy, I did not find that my sense of stability was enhanced in any noticeable way… 🙂

Sure enough, the flight map betrayed the pilot’s concern, with the route soon tracing the path of a spacious S. I shut my eyes and embraced my usual strategy: imagining I am on a bus on a pot-holed filled road in India.

Thankfully, we did have WiFi. So I was able to listen easily to my Christian Music playlist on Spotify—totalling 57hr 45min and 782 songs!—and always in shuffle mode, allowing me to enjoy my eclectic selections in a suitably random manner.

After wandering around in the air for awhile—and at the same precise time that the “flight attendants, please be seated for landing” message came over the public system, my own private system started a song. Uncanny. Right on cue. It has been my favourite song for many months now. A teary song for me.

And God knew this. Oh yes, he did.  It all sounds slightly silly now, but let me tell you—at that time, his sense of timing was so precious to me. It was a little gift of grace, reminding me that God was with me.

Here is the song.

In recent years, there has been another teary song in my life…

It was back in covidian times. I can’t remember the exact circumstances, but I was struggling. I was not sleeping well. I’d lie awake replaying conversations, battling with myself—wishing I’d said this instead of that. The little balls of anxiety had a way of forming in my tummy. I’d catch myself needing to take some deeper breaths. You get the picture, I’m sure.

And here it is important to remember that Spotify has this annoying habit of departing from your playlist in order to ‘make recommendations’ of songs they think you’d like—and then playing them without asking you. Ugh. It is so annoying.

So I am sitting back in one of our chairs in the lounge. A song comes on that I’ve never, ever heard before. The accuracy of the phrases sliced through me. It was uncanny. “Did you just sing those words? Hang on, how did you know?” I remember calling Barby over and saying “Just listen to these words!”. As a good song tends to do, it gave me the words to express what I was thinking and feeling. And a bit like the Psalms, they were “words to God on the way to becoming words from God”.

Here is the song.

As I’ve listened to my teary twins, I realised that they do carry some likeness to those Psalms.

There are four easy ways to help preachers enter into a Psalm: (a) follow the tenses—past, present, and future; (b) follow the people—”they”, “you”, and “me”; (c) follow the spaces—the ‘out’, the ‘up’, and the ‘in’; and (d) follow ‘the little words that means so much’, the ones that provide the hinges on which a Psalm swings—for example, words like “but”, “so that” and “because”.

Once we’ve worked through these combinations, we find ourselves very much in the Psalm. While there is a lot of both (b) and (c) in these two songs—let’s go for (c)…

Up

This is a way to describe how a song takes us to God.

Faithful One affirms God’s faithfulness (“faithful one”), immutability (“unchanging”), eternity (“ageless one”) and Lordship (“Lord of all”). Fear No More affirms God’s sovereignty (“you’re in control”), power (“You are greater”) and victory (“you have already won … you have overcome”).

WOW. That is a lot of affirming going on—in just a couple of simple songs.

Out

This is a way to describe how a song takes us into the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

Faithful One speaks of “times of trouble” and of falling down. Fear No More gathers “every anxious thought that steals my breath”, “a heavy weight upon my chest”, “lie awake and wonder what the future will hold”, “worry in the dead of night”, a “battle raging in my mind” and “the wind and waves are coming”.

Both songs describe the circumstances to be “the storm”. “All through the storm” in Faithful One—and in Fear No More, “Even though I’m in the storm, the storm is not in me”.

In

This is the way the Up goes to work on the Out to transform the In that is going on inside me.

To help me see this, I like to find the phrases where “You/You’re” mix and mingle with “Me/My”. Such phrases describe the way God can land in our lives. So, for example, in Faithful One, “You lift me up” and “My hope is in You alone”. Or, in Fear No More, “You’re my courage”, “You’re my strength” and “You shelter me”.

But there are a few other things to notice…

One is the repetition—which conveys intensity. Listen to this happening with the repetition of phrases in which the word “I” appears. With Faithful One, it is “I depend on you” and “I call out to you, again and again” (2x). With Fear No More, it is “I will trust you, Lord … I will fear no more (repeated a lot) … I will lift my eyes … I will lift my cares.” I love the passion that is sparked here. Normally I find a song filled with my “I wills” to be a bit pale and shallow when compared with singing about God’s “I wills”. But because these songs are already soaked in such strong affirmations about God (“Up”), it doesn’t seem to matter.

Another is the presence of imagery—and how the imagination stirs the emotions. And not just the image of a storm. In Faithful One, there is a ‘rock’ and an ‘anchor’, while in Fear No More, the more general imagery of ‘power’ and ‘darkness’ leave room for us singers to fill in the gaps and make them specific.

One more. Can I mention one more? In Fear No More, the phrase “I’ll leave them there” strikes a deep chord for me. Years ago, my father pointed out to me the very same phrase at the end of an old hymn. As he recalled the words, he’d express this final phrase with such a dramatic flourish. Here are the hymn’s first and final lines (NB: I mentioned this hymn in lyrics for living 13).

O my Saviour, lifted from the earth for me, draw me, in thy mercy, nearer unto thee … Bringing all my burdens, sorrow, sin, and care, at thy feet I lay them, and I leave them there.

I think Dad knew that ‘leaving them there’ was going to be a challenge for me. He was right. The phrase has stuck with me. Then all these years later, I am unexpectedly blind-sided by exactly the same phrase being used in a similar context, with Fear No More: “I will lift my cares, Lay them in your hands, I’ll leave them there.”

Enuf. If I say much more, I’ll start ruining these songs for you!

Let me close with a couple of ‘live’ performances of the songs—in the hope that you, too, will be strengthened in the storm by them.

I searched and searched for an example of Brian Doerksen singing his Faithful One song ‘live’. I found a couple of examples, but neither was anything like the one I heard more recently. Was he part of a Christmas—or, New Year—concert at the Royal Albert Hall, in London? I can’t remember the details of the context, but he sang it and it was just so beautiful…

Never mind! Eventually I found Faithful One being sung by Uganda’s Imani Milele Choir. It’ll do me just fine, mighty fine!

nice chatting

Paul