She indicates that a seed began to grow when she was a college freshman at Auburn University (see its location in eastern Alabama on the map) that eventually blossomed into a song. “Ancient Words” had been cultivated inside Lynn DeShazo for just a handful of years, compared to the pages of scripture upon which she leaned for daily spiritual sustenance. But she seemed to hope that what she wrote in 1999 would possess both a contemporary and a classic old feeling all at the same time. The resulting song was an appreciation about scripture that she says grew stronger as the years accumulated, and as her understanding of the bible’s origins and its importance to generations of ancestors were laid open to her. Do you suppose it was an accident that one century was ending and another was about to begin, as Lynn DeShazo sought to link old and new into something memorable?
What exactly sparked Lynn DeShazo’s inspiration? Even Lynn doesn’t remember precisely, though she suspects it was more or less some routine events that coalesced and spurred her imagination. She admits her depth in bible knowledge was pretty shallow when she entered college, so her heart and head were vessels waiting to be filled, someone might say. Perhaps it was during one or more of her daily study sessions, some 20 years after she graduated from college, when she more fully captured the ancient book’s value, and what centuries of writers and translators had paid to make it available to us thousands of years after its inception. Was Lynn also aware of all the Y2K murmuring about her, as many of that generation worried that our world’s machines would go haywire as 1999 evolved into 2000? It would be hard to imagine Lynn not being aware of her modern surroundings, but she says she was focused instead on the people of 2,000 years ago, and what they endured to record and preserve what so many of us take for granted in our day. Lynn lauds those we call martyrs from that ancient time, even while acknowledging that those suffering for the Christian faith have continued to be a fact of life even up to our own time. Perhaps Lynn did not fully realize when she wrote it that a fourth verse of her song containing the words ‘martyrs’ blood’ would be so meaningful even today. All of what Lynn has learned in the wake of ‘Ancient Words’ continues to amaze her, she admits. She especially calls out the mostly unrecognized workers of Wycliffe Bible Translators, for their perseverance in translating the bible’s contents into various languages around the world. She notes that some of their efforts take decades to produce a written language and subsequently one of the gospel versions that tell of Christ. What was it Jesus himself said about going into all the world? (Matthew 28:19)
How many bibles are in the average American Christian’s home? You might have a dozen or more old-fashioned printed copies, besides access to numerous electronic bibles. I have a desktop computer app – Bible Gateway – that has 62 different translations of the bible – 62! What would Johannes Gutenberg from the 15th Century think of that? And, since there have been people, as Lynn DeShazo has noted, who have taken enormous risks to make the bible circulate throughout the world, one has to ask ‘what accounts for this phenomenon’? Can anything stop the Bible from getting around today? Has it occurred to you that the Bible – called the most popular book in the world, according to Guinness, with 5 billion copies made and sent out – that it is really a reflection of Him? And yet, He still allows you and me to choose Him, or not. Do you think you can afford to overlook Him today?
The only source for the song story is the book More Precious Than Silver – The God Stories Behind the Songs of Lynn DeShazo, by Lynn DeShazo, WinePress Publishing, 2010 (pp. 47-53).
If you need an electronic bible, here’s one with 62 different versions available: https://www.biblegateway.com/
See here for what Guinness says about the Bible. https://quizzclub.com/trivia/according-to-guinness-world-records-what-is-the-best-selling-book-of-all-time/answer/112884/
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