Nearer My God to Thee -- Sarah Flower Adams

Did this composer experience her own dream, after she read about the one her ancient predecessor envisioned (see picture here of Jacob’s dream)? Or, maybe it was just the reading of the story in Genesis that spurred Sarah Flower Adams’ imagination, so that she thought of being “Nearer, My God, to Thee” and spoke to Him in five verses about how she felt. (The hymn’s theme also touched another composer, Edward H. Bickersteth, Jr., who wrote a rarely heard sixth verse after Sarah’s original five were published.) She may have been pondering her life’s challenges as she reached out to Him with this prayer-song, a not uncommon posture to take when conversing with the Almighty. After all, who else can one count on to listen and respond except the Creator, the One who can solve my troubles?

It was 1840, and 35-year-old Sarah Adams and her sister Eliza were collaborating with their church’s minister on a hymnal project in London, an assignment that had Sarah perhaps looking backward as well as forward. She’d wanted to be an actress, and had at least one great moment on the stage, at least until poor health forced a change in her outlook just a few years earlier. Her sister’s frail health must have been on her mind at times too – Eliza would die from tuberculosis just five years later. So, Sarah had steered her life into writing, abandoning a thespian career for the pen she could more easily wield. The sisters were in the midst of the hymnal’s compilation when their minister-collaborator coaxed their involvement in capping his next week’s sermon with a brand new hymn. The subject was the episode that found Jacob sleeping with a stone pillow and dreaming of an angel staircase (Genesis 28:10-22). Who could imagine being able to sleep with a stone headrest? And, would that discomfort inspire dreaming, a slumber indicative of an especially deep rest? Perhaps it was God’s promise of his future that secured Jacob’s mind as he lay under the stars, drawing for him the angelic portrait in his mind. Were Sarah’s burdens -- a ‘cross’ (v.1), being a ‘wanderer’ (v.2), and ‘griefs’ (v. 4) – lightened as she considered how Jacob’s experience spoke to her?  It’s said that songwriting can be therapeutic, a method of managing one’s stress points.

What would I do if I really did encounter God, or one of His messengers, in a visible, memorable, and riveting way? Maybe ‘riveting’ comes closest to describing how I’d react, for most biblical accounts of humans meeting God or an angel face-to-face convey this – the encounter freezes the human in fear. God Himself says don’t look, or you’ll die (Exodus 33:20). With this in mind, how is it Sarah wanted to draw near to Him? Wasn’t’ she afraid? Did she notice that Jacob had been, too (Gen. 28:17)? Yet, he didn’t cower. It seems the experience does leave the follower frightened, but yet mesmerized and intrigued too. If He shows me a dream, could He in fact want more than fear from me? Could He want intimacy, too? Maybe that relationship urge I have in my life is less human, and more God, than I thought.     

      

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; Amazing Grace: 366 Inspiring Hymn Stories for Daily Devotions by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1990; 101 Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985; and Then Sings My Soul – 150 of the World’s Greatest Hymn Stories, Robert J. Morgan, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2003.

Also see the composer’s brief biography here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/a/d/a/adams_sff.htm

Also see this link, showing all six original verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/n/m/g/nmgtthee.htm

Awesome Power -- John G. Elliott

John G. Elliott shared some thoughts below on how he came to write the song “Awesome Power”. I thought his words sparked some ideas for me…how about you? See what you, my fellow music lovers and worshippers, think:

That song has a most unique history. I had been working as a songwriter in Nashville beginning in 1983. By the time 1989 rolled around I had had 45 songs recorded or printed by other artists. GMA and ASCAP had me giving talks and seminars on songwriting and I always emphasized the importance of re-writing, re-writing and re-writing until a song came into its final form. I generally opposed the idea, held by many, that songs always come by "inspiration"----that it was more like a craft that requires time and investment and refinement. However, one morning in April of 1989 I woke up "hearing" a melody----I was coming, as it were, out of a dream. I cannot now remember if I heard the words "awesome power" at that moment or if they came to me almost immediately---but it would be an experience that I would honestly have to label supernatural. It is my opinion that I was hearing something that was happening in heaven itself---I guess you would have to "be there" to know by the nature of the experience. It has not happened to me in that profound kind of way since then.

Does Elliott’s experience resonate with you? I asked him afterward if he had ever wondered what it’s gonna be like to actually be in the Holy One’s presence someday, and to hear His voice. Is God a tenor or a bass, or can we expect Him to sing the lead?! John says: His voice will probably encompass ultra bass, bass, tenor, alto, soprano and ultra soprano all at the same time! John then suggests reading Revelation 14, as a way of trying to imagine what God’s voice will be like. This whole discussion has another question running through my head: If God is a musical being (as Zephaniah 3:17, among other biblical passages, suggests), do I engage in something supernatural when I sing or otherwise let music get inside of me and motivate me? Is that part of its power, and why God instructs us to sing to Him? Is His awesome power, as when he parted the Red Sea (see picture above), on us when we worship with music?

If John Elliott is right, and he was hearing something going on in heaven that April morning in 1989, I wish I had the ability to more clearly capture what goes on in my dreams, don’t you? (Check my November 15, 2008 songscoops blog entry http://songscoops.blogspot.com/search/label/Millard , in which dreaming is explored a little.) Maybe He’s just waiting for a time when I get more curious about heaven, a time when He can respond with a glimpse through images and sounds planted in my mind. Give it a try – maybe a song’s waiting to be born. The song scoop story is the result of e:mail contact with John G. Elliott on 7/27/2010.

The below site is the link to a site that gives some history of Elliott’s life: http://www.digitalcuts.com/mall/P_JElliott.htm

I Can Only Imagine -- Bart Millard

Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar (Isaiah 33:17) Most of my dreams frustrate me. Only a few times have I ever remembered more than a few hazy images of what a few seconds earlier had been quite vivid and real. Most times I’m more likely to just roll over and return to making zzzz’s. Sound familiar? If I can believe what doctors say (and what I read on Wikipedia) about dreaming, then I feel still more cheated by my own mind’s trickery. According to the experts, an average normal human being dreams two hours every night, so over a normal lifespan I will spend six years dreaming. About what?! I cannot even remember most of the details of these episodes, yet I seem to need this bizarre activity to be healthy – rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is necessary for one’s well being, they say. Is our Creator trying to tell us something about our own minds when they are let loose, when our own thoughts can create images our logical consciousness will not permit? Bart Millard, lead singer with MercyMe and writer of the hit song “I Can Only Imagine” might be described as a dreamer, for he began considering his own imagination many years ago, and his thoughts stuck with him until he finally composed what had so struck him several years earlier. You can read about Bart’s story behind this song by linking to it here http://www.christianitytoday.com/tc/2003/002/14.16.html, or keep reading below.


 Bart lost his father to cancer in 1991, and he relates that he turned that loss into a time devoted to thinking about what his dad was experiencing on the other side of life’s journey. The phrase “I can only imagine” captured his thoughts, so that he wrote it everywhere, reminding himself of his own destiny and also easing the pain of his earthly loss. It was not until 1999, however, that Bart and his friends in MercyMe recorded the song with that same phrase. Bart says the song was written in ten minutes after he found the words he had recorded in a notebook many years before. Bart deflects the admirers who wonder how he was able to write a hit song so rapidly “….it had been on my heart for almost ten years”, he says. “I ask Him (God) questions. I have faith that Christ is real”, Millard shares. It’s clear that MercyMe’s lead singer’s imagination is not something he ignores as a hazy picture, a subconscious mind-trick at 3:00 AM.

What do you think of when you dream about paradise, about heaven? Pearly gates? Streets of gold, or a yellow-brick road such as the path to Emerald City in Dorothy’s journey through Oz? That’s what I tend to wonder about…it almost seems similar to some of the images in Revelation. Bart Millard wonders in the song what it will be like to be in God’s presence, to walk with Him, to actually see Him. I think that, like the song says, I won’t even be able to stand or say anything for a while, if heaven and the Lord are as brilliant as I imagine. A River of Life is there, I’m told, but I still cannot really grasp that people I now see only in my mind or with pictures are there. Dad, a grandpa I never met (and who’s last words I’m told were ‘what a life’), and friends in the last few years…Bill, Sarah, Bob. They’re there. And I wonder if I’ve discovered why God lets, or perhaps makes, me dream. Is it His way of subliminally telling me my hazy thoughts, though dim, are gonna become real, someday? That I should trust my imagination, and let it run wild, to rejoice in what awaits? I’m counting on it, aren’t you?