Is being near to God supposed to be easy? It won’t be as easy as drawing water from a well, something that Jesus once asked an outcast woman to do for Him (John 4:7). Perhaps this episode was still on the Master’s mind later when He talked to some others; could there have been some of those same people, or maybe others even later, who would say “O Draw Me Lord” as they prayed? That was in fact what the songwriter David Baroni was thinking some 20 centuries later when he paired these same words with music, perhaps while he was in his Nashville (see its seal here) home. Jesus’ encounter with a curious group of people, whom he suspected were looking for another miracle-inspired feast that He could have easily repeated, turned most of them into skeptics, even hostile scoffers. How did Jesus expect to engender their belief and devotion when He seemed to have a penchant for wild statements like what He uttered on this occasion? Could that have been His point, that He wants not just anyone, but someone who is really thirsty, someone who’s ready for radical commitment?
The 39-year-old David Baroni (in 1997, when ‘O Draw Me Lord was included on an album) was evidently reading his bible one day, when he happened upon the chapter in which Jesus really tested the devotion of His followers with some very peculiar assertions about Himself (see John 6:25-59). It seemed like the more He talked, the deeper became the disdain of the people surrounding Jesus on this occasion. ‘I’m bread’, ‘my blood is real drink’, ‘you have to eat and drink me to have eternal life’, and finally – perhaps the one that most upset them – ‘I have come from heaven’. Their dubious reaction to His heaven-sent claim had Jesus tell them something else they did not appreciate: ‘Only my heavenly Father can draw you to me, and that will grant you a death-defying resurrection’(6:44). That mindboggling statement, if you can imagine someone who’d been known to others for 30 years saying this, must have made them gasp and maybe even snicker with derision. ‘Yeah, right Jesus – tell us another one!’ And He did. The only thing that makes this scene make sense, is that Jesus was omniscient, and thus He knew that He needed to upset their applecart about what they thought God was there to do for them. This conversation that John records for us must have lasted at least several minutes, probably in fact much more than the 9+ minutes that you can spend watching and listening to David Baroni sing the song (see link below). He sings the words over and over again, perhaps an unintentional metaphor for how challenging it might be for an individual or a group with preconceived notions about God’s nature to come near and receive His embrace. David indicates it is a prayer, and that God does want to ‘woo us’, and even allows us the grace to answer Him. Will it be easy? Do you and I need an encounter with Him, like the one with the crowd in the 1st Century?
Even many of Jesus’ disciples found what Jesus had to say on this occasion pretty stunning, and difficult to accept (John 6:60-71). And yet, ‘to whom else shall we go?’, Peter said. Jesus said he’d draw people to Himself one other time (see also John 12:32), when He’d die. Very confusing and troubling – and yet Jesus doesn’t pull punches, does He? This God does want to enable our path to Him (see Jeremiah 31:3, and Hebrews 7:19; and Heb. 10:1,22). He’s not drawing us a physical map, but a heart-emanating call from Himself to you and me. David Baroni reminds us that the method hasn’t changed. Prayer can do an amazing thing, if you really want Him.
See the composer/author comment on the song in the first 1:15 of this video: Bing Videos
See information about the author-composer here: About (davidbaroni.com)
More biography on the author-composer here: David Baroni | Discogs
This link indicates the song was on a 1997 album: Holy Fire | Christian Music Archive
See information on the seal of Nashville here: File:Seal of Nashville, Tennessee.png - Wikimedia Commons…This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice. For further explanation, see Commons:Hirtle chart as well as a detailed definition of "publication" for public art. Note that it may still be copyrighted in jurisdictions that do not apply the rule of the shorter term for US works (depending on the date of the author's death), such as Canada (50 p.m.a.), Mainland China (50 p.m.a., not Hong Kong or Macao), Germany (70 p.m.a.), Mexico (100 p.m.a.), Switzerland (70 p.m.a.), and other countries with individual treaties.
