Let It Rise – Holland Davis

 

Distraction. Disappointment. Prayer. Surprise. Worship. If you asked Holland Davis to describe using one-word details how he coaxed the song “Let It Rise” to its fruition, that is how he might answer. The moment didn’t start out very auspiciously, though he and his bandmates were in a mellow setting on a beach in Point Loma, California (San Diego area, see postcard view of it here), a place that should have had the assembled worshippers feeling appreciative for the Creator’s handiwork all around them. Holland might add that such a moment is when God’s activity might be most apparent – when things seem to be going awry, a callout to Him can elicit a radical change that can only be attributed to the supernatural. Just focus on His presence coming into a group that wants Him to be near, maybe through the prayer of even just one distressed soul. Holland tried it out, probably not for the first time in 1997. The episode just reaffirms how God ‘inhabits the praises of His people’ (as the Psalmist David said, 22:3).

 

Holland took advantage of an opportunity for his band to guide some evening worship, but once at a beachside chapel in Point Loma, he felt that the opportunity was going downhill pretty precipitously. The band, including some new members, was stumbling a bit in the performance, and the church’s members were responding with inattention, a cycle that quickly had Holland feeling desolate. God was not being honored appropriately, neither in the music the band was presenting, nor in the crowd’s reaction. Where could Holland turn, except in prayer to the God he so much wanted to lift up in reverence and exultation? And so, the words just came to him spontaneously, a petition that turned out to be the song’s title with some additional words that Holland’s spirit formed that day. The lyrics were really those that came from deep inside his moment of despair, as he asked God to help the band and the crowd sense the divine Spirit, and to ‘let the glory’, the ‘praises’, the ‘songs’, and the ‘joy’ of the Lord ‘rise among’ them. Could Holland have really been surprised when the awkward moment evolved into something truly special, like a beauty that takes one’s breath away? He says it was a strange feeling, but Holland seemed to recognize God’s presence nevertheless. As he and band members relaxed and let the Spirit flow through them and the crowd, an uncertainty in the crowd yielded to a greater sensation, and what was going to be a bomb of an evening worship instead grew into a 45-minute elevating experience. Was Holland Davis and the band responsible? Holland remembers feeling that his only credit for the evening was trusting that the Spirit was already present, if he and the rest of the assembled would accept that God was indeed near, not far away. If a crowd gathers with the intent to praise Him, that is harmonious with God’s desire, too. Worship leaders only need to believe that, and let the worshippers know they can believe it too.   

 

What’s left after worship has been had? Perhaps that is the thought that had Holland on edge as the evening in 1997 began. How might the evening’s other plans have proceeded, if the music had not inspired genuine worship? It was a bible study night for the church, after all. Would a dispiriting worship harm a study that was meant to bring relevance of His word to them? I want to know that He can make a difference to me in the middle of a busy week, not leave me shrugging my shoulders. No doubt there might have been some in Jesus’ era who thought His life and effect was a ‘so what’. What was it Pilate meant when he said ‘What is truth?’ And yet, Jesus inspired so much passion among others – both venomous and adoring. Can you feel His passion for you? There’s something He’s put inside you, which He wants to make grow…it’s called eternity (Ecclesiastes 3:11). No one should want this without Him there beside you. The alternative is too horrible, and He’s too great. Think about that if you find yourself talking to Him soon.      

 

 

The source for Holland Davis’s song story is the book “Our God Reigns: The Stories behind Your Favorite Praise and Worship Songs”, by Phil Christensen and Shari MacDonald, Kregel Publications, 2000.

All Rise -- Babbie Mason

Once you hear some details of how her life and this song developed, see what you think. Did Babbie Mason know what she was doing when she decided to step away from teaching as she approached 30 years old? Maybe she already had something in mind a few years earlier when she moved to Georgia (she and her family now live in Carroll County, west of Atlanta – see the map), from where she wrote “All Rise”. Babbie must have had thousands of worship services in her experience by the time the mid-1980s arrived, so it’s not really much of a mystery what spiritual thought sparked the poetic words she crafted for this song. They summon images of an episode she probably had heard illustrated numerous times, a time that she and others had already been dreaming about – Eternity. On Easter, especially, it’s good to allow the mental imagery to take over for a few minutes. Join in!

Though a specific downbeat incident motivated Babbie’s poetry in “All Rise”, the end result expressed in the song she wrote was at the opposite end of the spectrum from what her emotions initially told her how she should feel. Babbie had failed in something she cared dearly about – a music ministry that she really wanted to base her life upon. She had just returned from a music competition, one in which she felt she’d failed, coming in just third. In the aftermath, walking soberly through her home a few weeks later, it suddenly dawned on her the key words that spurred “All Rise” – all believers would one day stand before the Judge of all the earth! So, how did a mere competition rank with that thought? Here was a pastor’s daughter, who had played the piano in church services as a youngster and must have heard her dad speak numerous times on the subject of the afterlife. Babbie had begun her adult life as a teacher in her home state of Michigan, and then at age 25 moved to Georgia, where she continued on that path, at least at first. By the middle of the 1980s she decided to pursue music performance professionally, and one can surmise that “All Rise” was among the first efforts she recorded in this new venture. Though she was far from Michigan, one can presume the mental scenery that she’d remembered from all those sermons growing up must have still been present. Imagine arriving in His presence, to receive the reward of being with Him and being made new yourself; this was what stuck with Babbie from Michigan to Georgia. While Babbie envisioned a ‘holy hush’ (v.1) among all the assembled, the throng wouldn’t be silent for long. ‘We were singing alleluias’ (v.2), and moreover, who could sit still while this was happening? ‘All rise’, she hears the Spirit say, again and again. Arise! Was Babbie indeed thinking of us mimicking Jesus rising at His Father’s command? If it was indeed Easter when Babbie wrote her words, that would be appropriate, but  those stirring thoughts she penned in “All Rise” cannot be confined to a single week of the year. It’s too big. (And, by the way, Babbie returned to that music competition the following year, and was the winner. How appropriate, she won when she focused on the big win in heaven, after experiencing a loss here on earth.)

Babbie might have had the words of any of several scriptures to stimulate her musical composition about people rising. Just think of what the ancient apostle said to a group from Thessalonica (1 Thess. 4:16). Or, how about what this same writer said to those in Ephesus (5:14)? He said much the same in the presence of the highest authority of his time (Acts 26:23). Could we say that he too was inspired, years later, by a rising among his own generation, when the Son had said that a guy named Lazarus would emerge from a grave (John 11:23-24)?  What about what an ancient prophet said to stir the people of his time (Isaiah 60:1)? There’s many, many more. God must want us to know something, beyond a shadowy doubt. This rising isn’t to be missed. Babbie is just underscoring it for all of us one more time. If you feel defeated like Babbie did that day in Atlanta, think how that earthly episode ranks –or really doesn’t – with what awaits you and me on the great gettin’ up morning! Now, get up!

The source for the song story is the book “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever”, by Lindsay Terry, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2008.

Watch this recording of the author-composer singing the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7EFZgKLrtQ

Read her biography here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babbie_Mason

See also this link: https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/babbie-mason-b-1955

Here’s the author-composer’s official site: http://www.babbie.com/index.php?id=3