Just As I Am-O Holy Lamb -- Jeff Nelson

 

Do you think that this author was reading, perhaps something from a vision that some guy named John had some 20 centuries earlier, when he wrote some poetry for a song? Take a look at what Jeff Nelson penned in 1993 (when he was most likely somewhere in his native Texas), evidently as he admired a classic old hymn, and how he merged his thoughts with an ancient apostle’s words and this classic 19^th Century hymn to create “Just As I Am-O Holy Lamb”. How do you and I compare to what the Holy Lamb represents in Eternity? That just might be a question to ask oneself after reading the three verses that Jeff crafted, in juxtaposition to a single verse that he borrows for the conclusion of his composition. Is it OK to be ‘just’ yourself when meeting the ‘just’ God?

 

Jeff Nelson has been involved in music in a Christian context for some time, including in the early 1990s when he was writing some verses to match the tune in the Charlotte Elliot hymn “Just As I Am”. I’ll allow Jeff to share in his own words here:

I love to plan a journey of worship around a specific theme or book from the Bible where songs and text readings are woven together.  I was working on a worship experience using the book of Revelation. I first read the whole book of the Revelation and pulled the scriptures together that were full of descriptive worship. I found slides of images that depicted much of what is described in the book. I found songs that brought much of the text to life already written, but I could find little on one of my favorite passages, Revelation 4&5. I also wanted to stay with familiar songs so the worship experience would have everyone involved as participants. My idea was to take those great worship passages that became the verses you now see, and find a familiar tune to match, so they would be easily singable. I was driving on a trip at the time and was working on the feel and the flow of the Revelation worship experience. I just kept humming familiar hymn tunes, trying to match the basic content of these verses. When I started humming Just As I Am, the words very easily fell into place.  That was a holy moment for me because I felt like the Lord honored my quest to match some of His most beautiful worship words in scripture to a beautiful, familiar hymn. I sang those verses over and over the rest of the way home. I have led that Revelation worship experience many times. It is a powerful experience and people, including myself, are very moved when we sing those verses. I believe that God created the marriage of the Word with music to be one of the most powerful ways we experience his living presence.     

 

Amen, Jeff! Thanks for sharing from your heart and experience, and letting the rest of us join in. Someday, it won’t be just a mountaintop experience that we occasionally enjoy. It’ll fill us forevermore. Imagine that, and aim – even right now -- to be there with Him and the rest of us!  

 

 

The story of the song was acquired via e:mail contact with the author on September 19, 2020.

 

See here for a picture of the author: http://highlandchurch.org/staff/member-detail/1528227/

Beneath the Cross of Jesus -- Keith and Kristyn Getty

 

This couple was most likely splitting time in 2005 between two continents, including in Europe where they live part of the time in Portstewart, Northern Ireland (see the coat of arms for Londonderry County, the location of Portstewart in N. Ireland, here). The Gettys, Keith and Kristyn, may need a map or a global-positioning device at times to keep track of where they’re headed (they also live part-time in Nashville, Tennessee, USA), but the place where they might say they were ‘living’ one day in 2005 was “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”. They value the history of their faith and the songs from centuries ago that speak of this faith, but Keith and Kristyn also want to be in the present with the exercise of their beliefs. It was the life of a believing community that spurred the Gettys toward what they would write. Read on.

 

Keith and Kristyn Getty appreciate the mark that hymns have made on Christians, and perhaps that best sums up why they engage in songwriting today. This Irish couple come from a faith culture rich in history spoken through hymns. How many of us appreciate how much we owe in our collective memories to hymnwriters from the British Isles? Indeed, the Gettys must have been mulling over this fact when they decided that a new version of ‘Beneath the Cross of Jesus’ was something they wanted to pursue. This 19^th Century standard by Elizabeth Clephane (see this blogger’s August 18, 2012 entry that relates the song’s development) must have been one they’d sung many times, including in their own church in Portstewart. After all, Clephane was one of their British ‘cousins’, as a native of Scotland. Maybe it was sung on one or more of the days that the Gettys remember that they were engaged in a bible study on the book of James in that church, an episode that the couple says went on for a couple of months. Their idea for the renewal of ‘Beneath the Cross…’ evidently emanated from that study, and from a desire to emphasize the community in which believers live. The cross He bore purchases an incredible inheritance for the believer anticipating the future, but Keith and Kristyn thought that He’s so much more than just a future. He’s also about now. And, we occupy this time together; we belong to each other. ‘His family is my own’ (v.2), is a powerful statement, one which the Gettys say bans selfishness and dishonor of each other. We are ‘one through grace alone’ (v.2). This community the Gettys saw in verse two was bookended by how that group of Christ onlookers respond to Him (verses 1 and 3); I, as the individual, am astounded by His gift to me (v.1), and we, this collective ‘bride’ of Christ, live hopefully and joyfully, awaiting the culmination of His perfect act of love (v.3). There’s a lot to love about this spot beneath the cross!

 

Did God plan it this way, that our position looking up at the instrument of Christ’s execution would upend our concept of life itself? So perplexing it must have been for Mary, John, and the others to watch Jesus confront death, to endure this sting, this insult of His deity. And, what about us mortals? How many centuries of humans did God watch confront death with nothing to feel but foreboding? No doubt about it, death is a menacing thing. But now, death has not won – Christ has. Life doesn’t have to be over, and mortality no longer has to terrorize humanity. And, I’m not alone now, nor will I be when I exit this place for another. Keith and Kristyn remind us that the spot beneath His cross is not a lonely dead-end. He changes everything.     

 

 

 

http://www.fbcspringdale.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2015-03_HOTM-Beneath_the_Cross_of_Jesus.pdf

 

http://www.fbcspringdale.org/beneath-the-cross-of-jesus/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_%26_Kristyn_Getty#Kristyn_Getty

https://www.gettymusic.com/

 

see here for some details on the song story: https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/beneath-the-cross-of-jesus

Above All -- Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche

 

This was definitely one collaboration that altered the course of a song’s history, in a way that totally staggered its authors-composers. Two guys, Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche, decided that two heads were better than one in the 1990s, and yet they could not have predicted what would happen to a song named “Above All” that Paul had started and that Lenny finished. A studio in Lenny’s place in Muscle Shoals, Alabama (see map depicted here) provided apt surroundings for their musical project, but the collaborative effort took a turn that was truly exceptional. The song’s impact immediately overwhelmed them both, creating a memorable moment that they knew was no accident. It must have been a ‘goosebumps’ kind of episode; perhaps that much could have been expected, given the subject matter they were addressing.

 

The 40-something Lenny and 30-something Paul were both expecting to make some progress in their time together one day in the 1990s, but if asked today, they’d probably say that the way “Above All” emerged from that time was rather unusual. Paul’s initial effort at the verse captured Lenny’s attention, but it wasn’t until Paul was sound asleep later that Lenny’s contribution came to fruition. Perhaps this was a very incongruous recipe for success, but then maybe where this unconventional Savior was concerned, that was indeed the right method for successful songwriting. And, indeed this same contrasting theme was how Lenny’s chorus compared with Paul’s verse, something that Lenny recalls just knocked Paul for a loop when he heard it for the first time. How does one mention Him being ‘above all’ created things (v.1), and then wind up one’s thoughts by saying he’s despised, trampled upon, humiliated, and executed (chorus)? Two pictures of someone, especially the God of the universe, could not be more opposite. And yet, they’re true. Lenny says he and Paul had trouble singing the song’s chorus as they tried it out on themselves, because their emotions left them singing through their own tears. Perhaps you and I have felt it occasionally during an especially poignant movie, maybe in a war flick when the hero dies in an act of selflessness, saving a fellow soldier. Jesus is like that, isn’t He? Magnify that a bit – He did it for everyone on the planet across all of history. Try that on for size, and match it up with some music that penetrates to the spirit. That was what happened to Lenny and Paul in a studio in Alabama one day.

 

When one is trying to adequately describe the Messiah’s life, is there really an expectation that one will succeed? Maybe that’s what Lenny and Paul ultimately were hunting as they talked about and sang together their finished product the first time. Tell about His pedigree, and then about how He surrendered all of that. Tell about this contrast. What they sang stunned them, evidently overpowering the human inclination to sing the words and music, and to do what musicians do. They really needed to see if this blend worked, right? But, what they found by happenstance was that their own reactions provided the only answer they needed. Telling each other about Him is all any of us really need.         

 

The song story is found in the following book: I Could Sing of Your Love Forever, by Lindsay Terry, Thomas Nelson publishers, 2008. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_LeBlanc

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baloche