Steve Merkel seems to remember something started to sprout within himself in Poland, of all places, in the late 1980s. (See a seal of Poland here.) Like a new plant, it was really almost unnoticeable in its embryonic stage, but what he experienced there did not expire when he returned home. The Catholic worship that focuses on liturgy might seem like a mere mechanical exercise, but Steve says he felt something was budding, a bridge between his own Protestant background and that of his Catholic friends. It was a window that opened while he helped guide worship among some Catholic believers in Poland, where something like 70% of its citizens claim Roman Catholicism as their guide. Even while Steve set about making an album years later, he had continued to guide Protestant worship on Sundays, but also had related to his Catholic worshiping friends during the week. And, not unexpectedly, Steve’s close contact with his close Catholic friends gave him insights and inspiration that would help him reach deeper inside himself, to express more confession to and reliance on the God he’d known for some time. Appropriately, he was working on a large project he called Renewal Music, and the particular album that this new song inhabited was named Intimate Worship.
Perhaps what drew Steve’s attention most was the perspective a good friend (David Kauffman) shared with him one day about the differences between the music of Catholics versus Protestants. The former tended to focus more on confession and submission and dependence on Him, while the latter were more likely to approach God confidently. Steve indicates he felt convicted as he pondered these words, thereby spawning lyrics in ‘Lord, Have Mercy’ that echoed and built upon the song’s title. He says that long-time believers especially need to revisit the time when they were brand-new Christians who still identified themselves as weak, needy sinners, acknowledging that they needed a forbearing and understanding God. ‘Take off that mask’, Steve might say to sum up what he wanted to emphasize. At the same time, Steve says he was seeking to offer something new for his Catholic friends who were accustomed to liturgy in their experience, what they themselves would say was the ceremonial mass. Had it grown stale, we might ask? Steve doesn’t address that question directly, but certainly many Protestants might say (at least this blogger does) that on occasion, our worship songs can become so familiar that we drift into remote control. Steve thought both groups could ‘…intersect at the cross..’, where we can all recognize our humanity in the shadow of His sacrifice, and then seek to pass along this attitude to a world that still needs to know Him.
Dim, forgotten, doubting, unbelief…those are just a few potent words that Steve used in verse 1 to underscore the confession part of this attitude he sought to persuade others to adopt. Mercy -- a characteristic of Him who alone can dispense it to me, the often-wayward, disobedient creature He made – is what Steve has the worshipper cry a total of 20 times in this song. Is that enough? It’s as if Steve is underscoring for you and me that inescapable nature – human = imperfect. It doesn’t matter if I’m Protestant or Catholic, Islamic or Hindu, Jew or Buddhist, Baha’i or Sikh, or Zoroastrian or Mormon. Has anyone cornered the market on perfection? What about the Agnostic or Atheist…can they escape being human? Steve’s song has a second message, one that should resonate with all of us, deep down when we dare to look. God = mercy.
Read the brief song story here: The Story Behind the Song Lord Have Mercy | PraiseCharts; See it here also: Lord, Have Mercy | Hymnary.org; and, here also: Stories behind songs that changed the way we worship | ChristianToday Australia
Read a longer version of the story here: Song Story: (crosswalk.com)
Read about Poland’s dominant faith here: Poland - Wikipedia
See information on the seal of Poland here: File:Herb Polski.svg - Wikimedia Commons. This image is in the public domain according to Article 4, case 2 of the Polish Copyright Law Act of February 4, 1994 (Dz. U. z 2022 r. poz. 2509 with later changes) "normative acts and drafts thereof as well as official documents, materials, signs and symbols are not subject to copyrights". Hence it is assumed that this image has been released into public domain. However in some instances the use of this image in Poland might be regulated by other laws.
