O Lord, You're Beautiful -- Keith Green

 

It was a prayer in the middle of a sleepless night, and the result of this episode was one that Keith Green wasn’t afraid to share. (This most likely took place in Garden Valley TX [Smith County], where the Greens’ [Keith and Melody] Last Days Ministries was located in 1980.) He’d said “Oh Lord, You’re Beautiful”, and yet that compliment to God was not the entirety of what he had to say in this prayer. Keith also confessed some things, admitting that there were gaps in his devotion to the One who created and saved him. Adoration, and confession, and finally supplication were also present in Keith’s approach, so apparently he had three of the four letters in the ACTS acronym that so many believers have used to help organize and guide their thoughts to Him. What about thanksgiving, the ‘T’ part? Did Keith fail at prayer because this part seems to be absent from what he wrote, or are we just overlooking that part, somehow? Perhaps the ‘T’ part is the music-making with which Keith responded, taking a page from the psalmists: I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving (Psalm 69:30); Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song (Psalm 95:2). Giving back a song to Him who gave it – thanksgiving can indeed be reciprocal with this One we worship.

 

So, what exactly was keeping 27-year-old Keith Green up on a Monday night, a struggle that he had with something that would not allow him to rest? You can listen for yourself, by clicking on the youtube link below, or alternately read here a brief transcription (more or less) of what he says in the first minute of a performance of ‘Oh Lord…’. He says his prayer, beginning about midnight, was like a letter to the Lord. He didn’t know where to mail it, so he put it in his bible instead. And what was in this letter? He asked God to do something about his heart, because a lot of time had passed since he had met the Lord, and his heart was beginning to harden. This condition was becoming too natural, and Keith wanted to have ‘baby skin’ again, on his heart. He could already feel the inevitable advance of age, that he was getting old and wrinkled, with a callousness that had formed. He wasn’t really doing anything wrong, but he was more distressed because of the things he wasn’t doing. So, he stayed up until about 2:00 AM writing the song. The words he wrote in that two-hour span show he felt ‘tired’ (v.2); that his ‘faith (was) small’ (v.3), and that he’d ignored God’s ‘book of books’, and ‘prayer’ (v.3); and that he needed his ‘fire’ to be re-lit (v.4). He repeats in a chorus that he aspired to sharing God’s word, but that he needed ‘first…to just live it’.

 

We could gather from what Keith wrote, as the title words for this song-prayer indicate, that he had discovered God was with him. Keith might have sounded like a faith-struggler, but that did not seem to have diminished his view or desire to reacquaint himself with the God he knew was listening to him. Perhaps Keith had, during the first few moments when he first knew Him, saved this sensation, like keeping a special secret in a bottle. In 1980, it sounds as if Keith remembered this and had called from inside his own spirit for a renewal – like uncorking the bottle and letting the genie-God out to reform his spirit again. Keith’s life journey had not been smooth – from belief and musical success in his early youth, then to drugs and eastern mysticism as a teenager, and finally returning to Christ in the early 1970s – so one can really appreciate Keith’s expression of what he saw. He’d lived on the ‘other side’, one might say, so could that have magnified his gratitude for the God he could re-envision in 1980? Keith tragically died in 1982 in a plane crash with 11 others, two years after he wrote ‘O Lord…’. What might he say to you and me today? He might not recommend for you and me this circuitous route to God that he traveled, but Keith might respond that he was just a little bit like Jacob – a wrestler with God (Genesis 32:22-32). How about you…are you wrestling with Him?

 

 

Hear the author-composer tell the song’s story here, in the first minute of the song’s performance: Keith Green - Oh, Lord You're Beautiful (Live) (youtube.com)

 

Read about the author-composer here: Keith Green - Wikipedia

 

See information here about the map of Texas highlighting Smith County: File:Map of Texas highlighting Smith County.svg - Wikimedia Commons…the copyright holder of the image has stated the following: I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

To the Least of These -- Randy Gill

 

He’d just found out that his friend was behind bars. That’s what it was, with no sugar-coating. Shock, disbelief, disappointment – those were all present on the day that Randy Gill discovered something about a friend, a guy with whom he’d felt a certain camaraderie existed. His friend now wore an emotional weight about his neck, perhaps not unlike a millstone that brings someone low, threatening to drown him. Such a person, one who has disgraced himself, might be in the same quandary as the homeless, destitute soul we too often see at the traffic light, a battered creature asking for a handout. (The image ‘Least of These’ shown here is the placard used by a group at this blogger’s church, a group that seeks to help homeless people in Washington, DC each week.) “To the Least of These”, Randy thought, as he studied scripture and cried out with his insides after mourning his friend’s circumstances all night. And so, with that prayer, Randy helped something productive emerge from a tough situation. Hear Randy’s own thoughts about this below, and consider the phrase ‘there but for the grace of God, go I…’, probably something that we all ought to contemplate the next time we see a fellow human in a deep struggle.

 

One afternoon I learned that a dear friend of mine had been arrested. A secret life none of us would have imagined had suddenly become very public. It was humiliating to my friend and devastating to all of us who loved him. In the days that followed he lost his job, his reputation and was fearful he’d lose his family. I couldn’t stop thinking about how a life could totally change in an instant and my heart broke as I tried to decide how to respond to someone I had loved and admired for years.

 One morning, after a sleepless night, I sat down at my piano and started playing a simple melody. I began thinking about Jesus’ words in Matthew 25 about responding to the least of these. The second verse was actually written first – a direct response to my friend:

 May we reach out to the broken - The beaten the battered

To all who have fallen - Disgraced and ashamed

May we be a comfort - Loving forgiving

and offering grace in Your Name

 That was my prayer. I wanted to respond to my friend with the same grace the Father had shown me. The first verse and chorus were meant to broaden the scope of the song. I’ve always loved the simplicity of the chorus.

 To the last, to the lost, to the least of these. Let us be Jesus today.

I’m happy to say that my friend is doing well in a new career and his family has remained supportive of him throughout his long rehabilitation.

Thanks Randy, for reminding us about the attitude of grace….there’s never too much about Jesus that we can share today.

 

See here some biographic information on the song’s author: Randy Gill | Directory | Lipscomb University

 

Many thanks to Randy Gill, the song’s author/composer, for sharing his memories of the song with this blogger on 9/4/2023.

 

The image of ‘Least of These’ was obtained from the Fairfax Church of Christ Website: https://fxcc.org/ministries/local-outreach/

Be Lifted High -- Leeland Mooring

 

Another sleep-deprived night – how often does that circumstance help breed a new song? Leeland Mooring could say with confidence that, at least during one of these times, God was telling him to pray (maybe even with clasped hands) and worship, that Leeland needed to say ‘Lord “Be Lifted High”, because I’ve got something on my mind’. Maybe something had happened just recently, or perhaps it was a more chronic issue that was bothering Leeland, but the situation didn’t leave him with merely a ‘brain-fried’ feeling the next morning in 2006. And, sharing it with a musical friend, one who may have had similar episodes in his own experience, probably helped validate what Leeland’s sleepless event had generated. Even the casual bible reader might notice the number of times that God used sleep (as in dreams), or a sleepless time so that His mission can proceed (like Paul – 2 Corinthians 6:4-5; and 2 Cor. 11:27). So, what do you think…how may God have been using your human sleep cycle for His purposes?

 

Leeland Mooring relates in a video (see link below) that ‘Be Lifted High’ arose during one night following a long trip that he and his band members had just completed. Was it jet lag, or delayed stress that Leeland was feeling, which induced his insomnia? He doesn’t seem to dwell on the physical part of what happened, but more on what was going on inside himself, something that just told him he needed to pray and worship at that moment. Leeland mentions struggles that people endure were in his thoughts – things like sin, or emotional issues, or perhaps depression. Perhaps it was ‘sin’ most prominently, since he addresses that in the opening line of both verses 1 and 2 of the song – that sin ‘grows old’ and ‘lead(s) to pain’. It was with this realization -- of knowing what this disease of iniquity does to a person – that gave Leeland the answer he found in the poetry he found himself writing. ‘Put God in the center of all my issues, and all those toxic things just melt away’ – that sums up what Leeland felt about the crux of the matter, and gave him the song’s title words. Verses 3 and 4 indicated that Leeland thought another root of our human problem is being ‘prideful’ and ‘think(ing)…it was me’, that our basic egos shove us into the wrong place. It’s as if we are like those biblical characters we have all scoffed at, who worshipped the created things (like idols) rather than the Creator. You and I are His created beings, too. Mooring shared his song and his thoughts with Michael W. Smith, who evidently embraced what Leeland shared, since he included the song on his next album (Stand, in 2006). 

 

Leeland mentions one more effect of putting God in the center, and it’s in his song’s chorus so that it’s repeated, as if to remind us of its import. I don’t lift Him high just for my own eyes to see; it’s so ‘that they (will) see’. Will everyone eventually see the Creator? What do you think when you read 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, and Matthew 24:27? Oh yeh, He’ll be high then, all right. But, for some the sight will be horrifying, and for others it will be quite different – call it exhilarating. It really will be a result of some people seeing Him for the first time, even in their minds and hearts. For others, they will be seeing someone they’ve longed to see physically, while having held Him close – or, rather being held close by Him —for some time. Don’t wait until the sky parts, and then discover that you suddenly and terribly feel like ‘mourning as the Son of Man is coming on the clouds of heaven’ (Matthew 24:30). Get used to seeing Him now, even if it takes someone else helping you with your eyesight.           

 

See the song’s story here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSg8n2JSL8k (time-mark 0:45 – 1:52 of this New Song Café episode [worshiptogether.com])

 

See here for information about the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeland_(band)

 

Public Domain status of the picture of praying hands: (Artwork by Albrecht Dürer  [1471–1528]). The author died in 1528, so this work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or fewer. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1928.