Shout to the Lord -- Darlene Zschech

Is her experience in writing this song perhaps the preferred method? Was that maybe what Australian Darlene Zschech concluded after she wrote and “Shout(ed) to the Lord” in 1993? She might also say that an ancient anonymous songwriter deserved some of the credit for what she composed. Darlene was probably in Sydney (see an historic picture of it here), and pretty far geographically from the origin of the Psalm that she read that day, but she was surely closer to that writer and to the Creator whom he extolled when she was finished with her poem. Her experience is an object lesson for anyone who is feeling stressed-out and wondering if her life is going to be overcome by finances and family responsibilities. Cling to Him, call out to Him with a shout, a yell filled with trust. That was her therapy for one tension-filled day.

Darlene Zschech was having a rough day. Maybe it was one or the combination of her kids’ needs and the anxiety over money that she feared might not stretch far enough. Sometime during the day, Darlene had had enough, and she sounded retreat. At least for a little while, she needed a respite inside a space where she would not have pressing needs demanding her time. A small room that happened to have a piano was her refuge, where she opened a bible and read one of the Psalms. She didn’t even know this particular Psalm’s author’s identity (Psalm 96, sometimes called one of the ‘orphan’ psalms), but that didn’t matter. This centuries-old poet said something she needed. If all the earth could be coaxed to praise the Creator, Darlene did not want to miss out on that experience. The seas, the fields, and the trees, and indeed all the families of nations were entreated to give God a joyful response to His being. He brings salvation, and isn’t that enough? But, there’s so much more to Him, according to this unidentified poet. Maybe it was the mounting items that Darlene ticked off as she read verse after verse, but she says her despair lifted bit by bit, and she wanted to shout. So, she did, with her own pen. And, with the help of the keyboard nearby, she composed her response to the psalmist. She ultimately decided that at the end of the day, ‘nothing compares to the promise I have in You’, perhaps as the anxious thoughts she had earlier tried to reassert themselves. She must have felt a weight come off of her shoulders, because she mentioned the episode to a minister at the church. Hearing that a song had emerged, he wanted to hear it. This is part 2 of the story…

Darlene was frankly a very uneasy when the minister (with a friend, reportedly also present) came by the house to hear the product of her epiphany. ‘Stand way over there, and turn around’, was more or less what she told them, because she didn’t want to see the pained expressions on their faces. Every few seconds, she stopped to see if their indulgence of her musical expression had worn thin. But no, they were excited about Darlene’s song, and wanted to use it at the church. Perhaps it was the circumstances of its gestation and emergence into this tense woman’s world that captured the imagination of those who first heard it. Can you hear others saying ‘Darlene sounds like me!’ It is true isn’t it? I have anxious times in my life, and really breathe uneasy wondering about the future sometimes. Is that you too? Darlene says ‘me too’. Life happens, but God is. He’s the I Am. Jump and shout about that!

      

  

See a brief version of the song story in this source: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006.  

Also see this link that also tells a broader version of the song story: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/darlene-zschech/shout-to-the-lord

 

See also here, for a very short version of the story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shout_to_the_Lord

 

Read about the author-composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlene_Zschech

 

The author-composer’s official website: https://www.darlenezschech.com/about

He Is Lord – Anonymous

An ancient confession this is, from an ancient song. We might say the apostle borrowed it for his own recitation of a reminder to those who would listen. Why did Paul appropriate a song that contained the words “He is Lord”? Like so many who came after him, Paul may have discovered that an important message becomes more memorable if music is the vehicle to carry the words we want to retain. It must have been no later than the 1^st Century, and not before then either, when this song emerged, given its appearance in a letter (Philippians 2:10-11) to a group of people in the area called Philippi (modern-day region of Macedonia and Thrace, in northeastern Greece) and the content of the words. Was its origin in fact the region and the people to whom Paul wrote? Early Christians in that area and time are not the only ones who need a reminder.

Paul was likely not actually in Grecian Philippi when he penned his letter to its residents, but instead in Rome or perhaps elsewhere. Nevertheless, his heart was amongst the people there, and hence the letter he took the time to write and send to them. A prison was his location, though we might say he was actually under house arrest. Perhaps the words were eventually in a Latin chant – Ipse est Dominus – some eight or nine centuries after Paul would have first heard them sung. The 1^st Century musical form is a mystery – but, perhaps originating from a type familiar to those who had worshipped in a synagogue. Even with our gap in knowledge regarding the music, the words today still possess a unique potency. They were words of ‘first importance’, as Paul had already written to another group of people (1 Corinthians 15:3) in the same area of southern Europe (also in modern-day Greece), some years earlier. So, is it possible that this Roman citizen named Paul may have in fact spurred the development of ‘He Is Lord’ among fellow citizens with his own pen? Was the music not yet extant when Paul wrote to Corinth’s believers, but had arisen by the time he was arrested in Rome and communicated with those in Philippi? We don’t know, is the short answer, but these words and their nature certainly had already been spoken by many others since Jesus’ resurrection in about A.D. 33. So, sometime in the 30 years between that seminal event and Paul’s words to southern Europeans, people began to confess and testify musically with the same purpose. He died and arose, and every one of us will be humble before Him, and confess His kingship. It will be a proclamation of fact, a joyous exclamation, and a hope-filled trust that I place at His feet.

The words he repeated were a subset of something else Paul had heard sung in his letter -- that Jesus was a servant first, even as He was God. Maybe this odd confluence resonated with Paul, especially as he experienced the confiscation of his earthly freedom but expected the reward of his faith in the future. That must have made it sensible for Paul to write and do as he did after his Damascus Road experience. Someone says if I confess Him today, He will accept and mediate for me later; if I don’t, the consequences are incalculably awful. Is it so really hard to confess His status, to believe He is the truth in every sense? Don’t just do so because you dread burning in Hell – though that is appropriate fear, for sure. Seek him out. See if He’s the genuine article, according to historical evidence. Others have done so (Lee Strobel comes to mind, in our contemporary age), even as they sought to prove Him false; they are the present age’s Pauls. God may have an amazing plan for you, just like He had one for Paul. Are you beyond being amazed today?   

            

The NIV Study Bible, its notes, and the scripture references in the above are the only source for the song story.

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