What he created was a psalm-child, one of the authors might say. What Marc Byrd began to write might further be compared to the creativity of the character in this depiction of songwriting -- the most well-known psalmist named David, the poet-shepherd-king, when he used his harp. (This anonymous artist’s work is from the 10th Century, and is known as the Paris Psalter, showing David creating something beautiful while others listen.) Similarly, Marc launched the song “God of Wonders” using his own stringed instrument (a guitar) and the ancient Psalms during one weekend in 1999. And, the development continued when he shared his embryonic effort with his friend Steve Hindalong, which resulted in a fusion of their ideas into a song that would literally be heard in the heavens just a few years later. When you hear what Marc and Steve have to say, you might say ‘thank God that Marc was feeling a bit uneasy with himself one Friday, and was willing to share this mood with Steve.’ How many other songwriters have created because they had similar episodes? It’s rather reminiscent of how David went about his life and his music.
Marc Byrd was trying to make a choice at a fork in his spiritual road one day, and that’s when he had an encounter with one or more of the Psalms he was reading. The way ahead in his journey wasn’t clear, so Marc decided it was time to return to the beginning in an effort to recapture the vision he’d had for his life when he’d become a Christ-believer years before. Which psalm or psalms had he read? Psalm 8 and 19, from David’s hand, both give God praise for the heavens, among other things, while Psalm 86 is David’s cry to Him in distress. Marc might answer when asked that any number of other psalms also contained some key thoughts that helped move his spirit that day. It was enough to give Marc a foothold on a song, bringing to the fore much of the music and some words like ‘You are holy’. What he already had convinced Marc that Steve could contribute more to what Marc was as yet unable to verbalize. Marc’s music spoke to Steve in a potent way, evoking something that Steve felt was larger than any one person looking inside himself could find. It was like looking at infinity, something cosmic in fact, as he remembered the moment when he first heard Marc’s chords. And so, over the next several days the two of them pushed and prodded to find the right combination of music and words, a collaborative exercise that Marc and Steve found was pretty familiar and productive, just as it had been many times in the past for these two comrades. Could Marc and Steve have predicted that their song would be heard high above the skies, by astronauts in the space shuttle only three years hence (in 2003)? And, poignantly, could those same astronauts have known that their views of God’s wonders would shortly usher in eternity for themselves, when their spacecraft was destroyed upon entering earth’s atmosphere just days later? This sequence of events might give one pause, if you propose singing Marc and Steve’s song.
Are you ready? If you’ve ever sat in a crowd at the end of a worship assembly, you might have heard those exact words. ‘When I consider the heavens…’, David wrote so long ago, as he coaxed God’s people to live seriously, with eyes opened to His boundless might. Do you think astronauts and cosmonauts considered the heavens and the danger of their professions, when they were preparing to launch on their journeys in the last 50 years? It would certainly seem wise if they did so, because some 30 people have died trying to touch earth’s lower heavens in that period (see link below to an article). Someone says ‘that just proves it’s really hard to get to God, to meet Him.’ But just maybe, could God have seen events 20 centuries before they happened? Wanna meet God, He says? Here I am, in Jesus. Now, can we still say He’s too hard to reach?
The song story is found in the following book: I Could Sing of Your Love Forever, by Lindsay Terry, Thomas Nelson publishers, 2008.
See here for a discussion of space travelers who have died: https://astronomy.com/news/2019/10/how-many-astronauts-have-died-in-space
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