The Word Is Alive -- Mark Hall and Steven Curtis Chapman

 

When the Creator-God speaks, there is no compromising. With that in mind, you either live what’s inside of you or you don’t. Perhaps that’s what Mark Hall and his song collaborator Steven Curtis Chapman were essentially saying as they provided a musical reminder for themselves and some young people that “The Word Is Alive”. Mark and his group, Casting Crowns, could have been in Daytona Beach (see its seal here) when they cut an album called The Altar and the Door, which was released in August 2007; its focus was inspired by some troubling information that Mark read about how people were trying to ‘ride the fence’, so to speak, and were not taking the right way of living beyond the traditional Sunday worship space. Did the focus of The Altar and the Door provide some echoes in what Mark and Casting Crowns sang about Him being the Word, about how He cannot be disregarded or diminished?     

 

Mark Hall was one of the youth pastors at the church when he found to his dismay some entries in MySpace (a social networking forum that began in August 2003) from some of the teens he knew that sharply contrasted with the Christian lifestyle. These young people were really trying to live in two separate worlds – a phenomenon that Mark pointed out was not unique to youths. It’s easy to feel guilty and share at the Sunday altar what’s going on and how God should motivate a person’s daily life, but what happens between the altar and the door is the crux of the matter. Some of the lyrics that Mark and Steven wrote sound as if they were recalling some scriptures that make God-in-the-flesh too real to overlook, even for a moment, so perhaps the theme of the album provided the subtext for ‘The Word is Alive’, though neither composer explicitly says this. Take for example the title words of the song they wrote – ‘the Word is alive’ sounds so very much like what John wrote on multiple occasions, that He really lived, and really was/is God (John 1:1, 14; and 1 John 1:1). Lest anyone forget how profound was this Word, try on what John saw on Patmos: He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God (Revelation 19:13). If that one verse isn’t enough, try reading the entire 19^th chapter – and especially verses 11-21 -- to capture more of just who He is, and how terrifying and breathtaking He can be, especially to those who oppose Him. Perhaps this and what the Hebrews writer said (Hebrews 4:12) was what drove home the point for Mark and Steven – that the Word’s living and active, and mortally dangerous for those who don’t accept who He is. Did Mark’s youth group hear that when he sang ‘And it cuts like a sword through the darkness’ (chorus). Did they understand also that the ‘world and its glories (including that stuff on MySpace) will fade’. Make very certain you are on God’s side, 24/7.  

 

Mark and Steven also included a spoken portion in the song – maybe it helps emphasize the word that God spoke? – that underscores the diversity of individuals and episodes that worked over centuries to produce the bible and its core message: that Jesus and how He points to the God of the universe is the focus. The bible…it’s hard to appreciate how rare it was once upon a time, in centuries past. But now, do you and I take it too much for granted? And, does that translate into some ho-hums about His presence now? Don’t look at the mere surfaces of what He’s done, but go a little deeper, and then go even deeper. This book that He’s preserved for me has unmined truths, ways to look at Jesus that can fascinate and inform me anew, if I’ll just spend time in it. That’s how one keeps renewing the vision of Him, by finding something new about Him every day. What Mark and Steven and Casting Crowns have done is but one more reminder that this Word is still watching and waiting for me to keep on coming. Get used to hearing His voice, and what He has to say to you.    

 

 

See information on the album on which the song appears here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Altar_and_the_Door

 

See information on the graphic-seal here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_Daytona_Beach,_Florida.png …This work was created by a government unit (including state, county, and municipal government agencies) of the U.S. state of Florida. It is a public record that was not created by an agency which state law has allowed to claim copyright and is therefore in the public domain in the United States. The graphic-seal can be found inside this document: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daytona_Beach,_Florida

Going Home -- Antonin Dvorak, William Arms Fisher and Ken Bible

 

Homesick. That is a one-word description that best sums up how the music-writer and the original lyricist felt about “Going Home”. Antonin Dvorak was from Bohemia (See here the flag of Bohemia, Dvorak’s native land, known in the present-day as the Czech Republic) and had some feelings of melancholy, something that one of his students, William Arms Fisher, heard not only in the music, but also from the great composer some 30 years after its inception. Later, a lyricist named Ken Bible modified some of Fisher’s words to give a hopeful Christian edge to the song’s message. Dvorak was missing his birthplace, and evidently found some scenery while on his journey through America in the late 19^th Century that accentuated an expression of his feelings of displacement, and his longing to reunite with family. It’s a longing that most people feel at least once, or most likely many times, while on Earth.

 

Dvorak had come to the ‘New World’ in America from the ‘Old World’ of Europe in 1892 to become director of a music conservatory in New York, where he would stay until 1895, a time that left him feeling vacant at times, but also energized with what he discovered. In that light, his music for the 9^th (New World) Symphony would emerge in 1893 as one of his most famous and well-received works. Part of the music was something called ‘Largo’, upon which his student William Fisher would later base the words for ‘Going Home’, nearly 30 years later (in 1922). Fisher shared that Dvorak missed Bohemia, and that this bit of gloom mingled with his experience in seeing the American continent’s prairie land horizons. The recent experience of native Americans in this area, as well as of negros and the slavery through which they had come – both heartrending in their history – spoke to Dvorak as he pondered his own mood. This deep wistfulness was evidently something that the great composer did not keep to himself, and Fisher likewise expressed it in his poetry, including the title words of the song that he said materialized easily from the first few notes of the Largo that his mentor had composed. That Dvorak died in 1904, some two decades before Fisher’s words for this classic hymn would arise, speaks of how enduring and affecting was the music that the composer created. It must have had somewhat of the same effect on Ken Bible, who added words many decades later (by the year 2000) to emphasize the Christian’s hope of seeing that ‘Jesus is the door’, that ‘He is waiting…’ along with friends to greet us in the afterwhile (v.1). He’s the ‘Morning Star’, the ‘Light’(v.2), and the ‘Smile’ (v.1) at the end of this life’s journey, according to Ken. It is comforting for grieving people, in the moments when they most likely hear this tune and its words sung.

 

The New World Symphony arrived on the Moon in 1969, via the astronaut Neil Armstrong (see Wikipedia article link below). What Armstrong wanted to emphasize was the novelty of the experience, as he planted the first human footsteps on the Earth’s planetary satellite. But what he found was a dust-like surface, barren of any life – like friends or family -- and therefore quite different from what he or any other human would consider a place like home. It certainly wasn’t the American prairie, or a Bohemian scene that would have resonated with Dvorak. What Dvorak, Fisher, and Bible have given us, instead, are music and words that evoke images of a place filled with good, with peace, and with people with whom to share it. He knows what we need in that moment of mortal transition, and He provides a serenity that comes from His nature exclusively. Find rest and reassurance in a reality that goes on forever – that’s what the tune and its words communicate. It really defies written description. Let’s just go with the auditory sensation, and that pinprick in the soul’s deepest part that Dvorak, Fisher, and Bible have made.            

 

See here for the song story: Story of Going Home

 

See here for background of the music and its composer: Wikipedia_Dvorak_9thSymphony

 

See site here for one author who wrote some alternate words for the song: KenBible.com | Nurturing Your Creativity & Your Life in Christ, and  LNWHymns.com (see About the Author on site)

 

See here for information on the song: San Francisco Symphony - DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Opus 95, From the New World Antonín Leopold Dvořák was born at

 

Check out this video for a very beautiful rendition of the song: Bing Videos

 

See here for information on the flag of Bohemia: File:Flag of Bohemia.svg - Wikimedia Commons. The following statement is associated with the image: 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.