Lord, Have Mercy -- Steve Merkel

 

Steve Merkel seems to remember something started to sprout within himself in Poland, of all places, in the late 1980s. (See a seal of Poland here.) Like a new plant, it was really almost unnoticeable in its embryonic stage, but what he experienced there did not expire when he returned home. The Catholic worship that focuses on liturgy might seem like a mere mechanical exercise, but Steve says he felt something was budding, a bridge between his own Protestant background and that of his Catholic friends. It was a window that opened while he helped guide worship among some Catholic believers in Poland, where something like 70% of its citizens claim Roman Catholicism as their guide. Even while Steve set about making an album years later, he had continued to guide Protestant worship on Sundays, but also had related to his Catholic worshiping friends during the week. And, not unexpectedly, Steve’s close contact with his close Catholic friends gave him insights and inspiration that would help him reach deeper inside himself, to express more confession to and reliance on the God he’d known for some time. Appropriately, he was working on a large project he called Renewal Music, and the particular album that this new song inhabited was named Intimate Worship.

 

Perhaps what drew Steve’s attention most was the perspective a good friend (David Kauffman) shared with him one day about the differences between the music of Catholics versus Protestants. The former tended to focus more on confession and submission and dependence on Him, while the latter were more likely to approach God confidently. Steve indicates he felt convicted as he pondered these words, thereby spawning lyrics in ‘Lord, Have Mercy’ that echoed and built upon the song’s title. He says that long-time believers especially need to revisit the time when they were brand-new Christians who still identified themselves as weak, needy sinners, acknowledging that they needed a forbearing and understanding God. ‘Take off that mask’, Steve might say to sum up what he wanted to emphasize. At the same time, Steve says he was seeking to offer something new for his Catholic friends who were accustomed to liturgy in their experience, what they themselves would say was the ceremonial mass. Had it grown stale, we might ask? Steve doesn’t address that question directly, but certainly many Protestants might say (at least this blogger does) that on occasion, our worship songs can become so familiar that we drift into remote control. Steve thought both groups could ‘…intersect at the cross..’, where we can all recognize our humanity in the shadow of His sacrifice, and then seek to pass along this attitude to a world that still needs to know Him.

 

Dim, forgotten, doubting, unbelief…those are just a few potent words that Steve used in verse 1 to underscore the confession part of this attitude he sought to persuade others to adopt. Mercy -- a characteristic of Him who alone can dispense it to me, the often-wayward, disobedient creature He made – is what Steve has the worshipper cry a total of 20 times in this song. Is that enough? It’s as if Steve is underscoring for you and me that inescapable nature – human = imperfect. It doesn’t matter if I’m Protestant or Catholic, Islamic or Hindu, Jew or Buddhist, Baha’i or Sikh, or Zoroastrian or Mormon. Has anyone cornered the market on perfection? What about the Agnostic or Atheist…can they escape being human? Steve’s song has a second message, one that should resonate with all of us, deep down when we dare to look. God = mercy.

     

Read the brief song story here:  The Story Behind the Song Lord Have Mercy | PraiseCharts;  See it here also: Lord, Have Mercy | Hymnary.org;  and, here also: Stories behind songs that changed the way we worship | ChristianToday Australia

 

Read a longer version of the story here: Song Story: (crosswalk.com)

 

Read about Poland’s dominant faith here: Poland - Wikipedia

 

See information on the seal of Poland here: File:Herb Polski.svg - Wikimedia Commons. This image is in the public domain according to Article 4, case 2 of the Polish Copyright Law Act of February 4, 1994 (Dz. U. z 2022 r. poz. 2509 with later changes) "normative acts and drafts thereof as well as official documents, materials, signs and symbols are not subject to copyrights". Hence it is assumed that this image has been released into public domain. However in some instances the use of this image in Poland might be regulated by other laws.

Heaven Is In My Heart -- Graham Kendrick

 

Graham Kendrick wanted the gathered to feel something, and respond. That, simply put, was how Graham could imagine people answering, by saying “Heaven Is In My Heart”, when prompted to explain why they were marching in a parade-like atmosphere. While Kendrick certainly understood what God on earth was saying when a group of learned people asked him to describe His kingdom, Graham didn’t really envision the same thing as Jesus did when He answered. Graham wanted people to make the kingdom visible, an exuberant expression that would demonstrate something to the world. He and others might have started with a vision for how this would look in Britain, but it didn’t stop there. And, it certainly didn’t remain confined inside each person, as someone might conclude when reading the Master’s words.

 

"Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, "The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17: 20-21, New International Version). Now, when Graham Kendrick read those words, he might have easily said that we cannot say what the kingdom looks like, and we’re not going to contradict the Lord. Instead, as Graham and others talked about their joint venture called March for Jesus, they felt that those participating should exhibit something – an expression in one’s words that testify to what is going on inside. If someone knew he or she was made for eternity with Him, how would that look and sound? In short, Graham wanted onlookers to see an unquenchable joy among people singing ‘Heaven Is In My Heart’, as they marched and unashamedly told the world what He does right now, and plans to do in the future. Graham says that while it’s part of the ‘kingdom is now and not yet’ explanation that Jesus told followers more than two millennia ago, the message that he’s conveying focuses on an outgrowth from the ‘not yet’ part – that we have hope, even as we live in the ‘not yet’ time. The organizers of March for Jesus, which was first planned in London in 1987, thought believers from various denominations could fix their attention, and of those watching, on Jesus. He is Lord, and will come to take us home – unquestionably the greatest source of an ‘Amen’ in the believer’s life. The thoughts of his majesty and holiness (v.1); his all-powerful sacrifice that purchases certain redemption for all (v.2); and the presence of Him in us now and for all times (v.3), are enough to make Graham’s song’s title words leap from the spirit of the worshipper in every other line of the song. Because of the way Graham’s song words flow, heaven is unambiguously a place of never-ending ecstasy. Who couldn’t march for that!  

 

After London, the March for Jesus took off in many other places, and is continuing to spread and be celebrated today. It stretched across the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, and to Brazil, where millions took part in 1993. There’s March for Jesus times scheduled for the United States in all 50 states and more in 2022, according to the website for the event. But, you and I don’t need to wait until next year to do what Graham Kendrick has given us opportunity to do already, today. Let it show in my words, in my attitude, in my behavior, and on my face. Graham and the others who organized the first march must have thought that what we have is too wonderful to keep to ourselves. Eternity, now and in the next phase of existence, is big and beautiful, with our God present to crown our faith. What could be better!  

 

See here for author biography: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Kendrick

See here for the song’s brief story: https://www.grahamkendrick.co.uk/stories-behind-the-songs/stories-behind-the-song/heaven-is-in-my-heart

Here is the description of the event for which the song was developed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_for_Jesus

See the official site of the event that the author and others organize across the world: https://themarchforjesus.org/

They'll Know We Are Christians -- Peter Scholtes

“Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples”. (John 13:35)

He got it straight from the bible, and he wanted the same theme to be true in the place and time that he lived. That’s what Peter Scholtes thought in the mid-1960s, as he was organizing a diverse gathering based upon the theme that “They’ll Know We Are Christians”, something that a God-Man said that a writer remembered years after the words were first spoken. He was on Chicago’s South Side in a church basement where he was directing a choir, but that doesn’t mean he was insulated from what was going on about himself and the people to whom he ministered. It was a turbulent time in urban America, meaning Civil Rights – the reach for them by some, while others fought to preserve the status quo -- was very much on the minds of citizens. So, Peter wondered about unity in a cultural and a spiritual context, and he had the perfect model when he considered what to pen in four poetic verses.  

Peter Scholtes must have had a special place in his heart for the places along the western shore of Lake Michigan in northeastern Illinois since his childhood, a condition that mingled with the practice of his faith in a Catholic church where he served as a priest in the 1960s. He was raised in Evanston, 12 miles north of mid-town Chicago, so it was no surprise that after attending two nearby seminaries for his undergraduate degree (he subsequently acquired a graduate degree at Boston University) Peter would land in Chicago someday. And, his heart was in trying to help the people of this area link arms in the midst of strife, not throw punches at one another. ‘We’, Peter wrote over twenty times in ‘They’ll Know…’ (it’s often also known as “We Are One in the Spirit”), as he borrowed the words spoken by Jesus. Peter knew that a blight was upon the inner-cities of the country, as black people sought access to the same rights as others about them. Violence, despite Martin Luther King’s admonitions, was just a lit match away in the tinderbox of race relations in Chicago and elsewhere. So, when Peter considered how to coax interracial harmony among different churches and peoples in some upcoming events, he knew what needed to be underscored. It was so apparent, that Peter reportedly composed the four verses of ‘They’ll Know…’ in a single day. For Peter, ‘We’ was linked to the ‘Spirit’ and the ‘Lord’ (v.1); ‘walk(ing) with each other’, ‘hand in hand’, in order to jointly ‘spread the news’ (v.2); and ‘work(ing)’ together (v.3). With the words of verses one through three in mind, all people could blend their voices to revere Him in the Trinity (v.4). A Christian community could really only draw others if love and unity in Him were the foundation. Peter probably heard the phrase ‘Make love, not war’ in his time, as antiwar protesters marched in opposition to a conflict on the opposite side of the globe that nevertheless involved many Chicagoans. Peter’s recipe for a love potion was never more needed.

People of the 1960s might tell us that few other periods in American history strained the generational and ethnic divides like that period. There were others -- the Civil War, the Great Depression, and certainly both World Wars – that threatened and broke down social mores, as some said at the time ‘America is coming apart at the seams’. A rent garment is not easy to reassemble. It has a gash in it that may only be repaired with an ugly patch, perhaps, reminding those who look that the original piece of clothing is irretrievable. A split people are harder yet to unify. That’s what Peter Scholtes saw coming –maybe events were already threatening to crush the community he loved. Peter proposed an alternative, and with the song he crafted so effortlessly, he indicated that Love is an action, not an emotion. What do you make of that? Hey, wasn’t there was another guy who loved through action, once?                 

See this link for brief capsule of the song story: https://hymnary.org/person/Scholtes_P

Also see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They%27ll_Know_We_Are_Christians