Speak, O Lord -- Keith Getty and Stuart Townend

I have a secret I’ll share with you about one of my vocational goals – maybe it will resonate with those of you who call yourselves writers or speechmakers. I wish, just once, that I could write something truly significant, and a piece that would need no editing whatsoever, something that would be perfectly pristine. Now wouldn’t that be something! Above my desk at work, I have a rolled-up sock with an amateurish face scrawled upon it in crayon, and a jagged paper clip stuck in it. It’s my somewhat twisted way of dealing with “editor frustration”, aimed at those folks who scrutinize my work to the nth degree, it seems. As I imagine my editor’s visage in the sock, I regain a measure of composure with a jab or two, deep into the sock…ahhh. Hey, you may call me Edgar Allen Poe (a la the tormented soul in “The Tell-Tale Heart”) or a voodoo witch-doctor, but this method hasn’t backfired on me yet! Seriously, I marvel at those craftsmen of the English language who can capture the reader’s attention with seemingly so little effort. Writers of the music language, too…how do they do it? Is it magic? Keith Getty, who has written many well-known contemporary Christian songs with Stuart Townend, including “Speak, O Lord”, shares his insights into music-writing (see the link at http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/getty.php), and he tells me something about this art-form that maybe you haven’t heard before. Simple is better, more powerful, and more memorable. Getty says that he has two goals in front of him when he creates – teaching theological and Biblical truth that speaks to listeners in everday life, and creating melodies that large groups, like churches, can sing. “… what we sing becomes the grammar of what we believe,” he says. Perhaps Getty’s maxim for song-writing springs out of his upbringing, one which leans on Irish folk songs and the hymns he sang in a Presbyterian church in Belfast. He’s also schooled himself, not by listening to pop music, but by listening to classical songwriters like George Gershwin, and to English folk music contemporary Kate Rusby. Getty’s songs, besides being simple, powerful, and memorable, also often fit into particular parts of the corporate Christian worship service. “Speak, O Lord” may be used for sermon preparation, as the hearer’s plea for an honest, open heart and mind to receive truth from Him. If Getty’s song really is the “grammar of what I believe”, I look at its words with more conviction. Do I really believe what I sing? Do I want to stand under the light of His truth, to be changed and used by Him? Do I trust God to direct me through this life? I think I do, and the melody and its words, in an uncomplicated way, invite me to approach God at this level – I need Him, and He is available, in all His GLORY, to help simple, imperfect, little me. I may speak (or write) in a weak, trembling voice, but in love, God listens and imparts His strength to me.