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Steps taken in the musical setting of a prayer . . .

Prepared for Day of Prayer presentation at Baptist Bible College

28 February 2006

David B. McGrew

Chris Casoni asks if I will speak to the class. I tell him I will consider it.
It is Saturday night, and I am fooling around on the piano thinking about what to put together for Sunday service tomorrow. I decide to improvise in the key of Db Major. I come up with this cheesy sort of “soundtrack:-like musical line. (I think it’s kind of pretty though). Notated, it began looking something like this:

Then, I put these two things together—Hey! I’ll find a Psalm that is a prayer to set with this music, and put the whole process down in writing to hand out to the students on Day of Prayer.
I begin typing this.
I look through the book of Psalms, and come across Psalm 16. I go to www.Biblegateway.com In the ESV it reads:

Psalm 16

A Miktam of David.

1 Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
2 I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you."

3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.

4 The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply;
their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out
or take their names on my lips.

5 The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

7 I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
8 I have set the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.

9   Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices;
      my flesh also dwells secure.
10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol,
      or let your holy one see corruption.

11 You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

I read the footnotes at BibleGatewaty.com. I discover that verse 9, “my whole being” in Hebrew basically translates as “my glory.” Nothing too critical.
I try to discover if this Psalm is quoted anywhere else in scripture. I Google “Psalm 16.” Right off the bat, I discover that it is used in Acts 2: 25–28. I also found a serious article on its use there at: http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=1784
I begin to pick through the Psalm, working it into a metrical setting. Between the Acts 2 usage where Peter quotes it on the Day of Pentacost as a prophetic psalm concerning Christ, and the actual Psalm proper, I begin the process of writing a few metrical stanzas. I open my browser to http://rhymezone.com/ I use this site to help rhyme my line endings. It may seem cheesy to you, but believe me—its has been very helpful to me. I begin to extract themes and think through implications of things. This whole process is a massive endeavor of focused meditation.

Big ideas: survival (of a person, of an idea, of a promise, etc.) depends on God’s sovereignty. David looked forward to the survival of God’s promise given concerning his descendant to be on the throne forever. I read over the Acts 2 passage again. I reconsider the opening of the Psalm, “Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.” I begin to think about how often I personally take refuge by exercising my own efforts—overwhelmed by a sense of anxiety. This is where a true meditation on scripture must go: it needs to touch us personally (at least in part). I think about you students here in this room (Lord willing), and how so many of you are anxious about so many things. I smile as I remember how powerfully the words, “Martha . . . Martha . . . you are anxious about many things” burned through my soul like a hot sword when I read it just a few years ago. I think about Rousseau writing his Social Contract prior to the French Revolution, and how he based his entire social formulation (which became the basis of Communism) on the end of mass survival instead of individual virtue. I think about the danger of our administration here at BBC raising the cost of tuition in order to “survive.” WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO PSALM 16:1??!! And look at the next verse: “I say to the LORD, ‘You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.’ ” (!) Put that into your pipe and smoke it. How often do we acknowledge that sort of thing, and then go live as if it mattered not at all? If we could pray this opening with the psalmist, what a gloriously humbling truth we would be meditating on. And it is an ultimate truth. It is this truth, the truth that no good exists apart from God, that invites wicked sinners to taste the wonder of forgiveness. It is this same truth that damns the self-righteous to hell for eternity. I write the following opening line:

In You, O LORD, my fears learn peace

I think of a number of different girls I have dated over the last ten years of my life whose lives were ruled (and wrecked) by fear. I remember how many times I foolishly thought that I could be their solution . . . . and how some of them believed that as well. What madness. What infinite sadness. That any man could fill a God-shaped void in the life of any woman is pathetic. I finish the first stanza:

In You, O LORD, my fears learn peace

Though when my passions stray

To trust in any lesser thing

My hope is torn away

Switch gears now to talk about the craft of text setting. This is a metrical setting. That means that each line has a set way that the syllables occur. In this case it is called “common meter.” This is hard to describe, but pretty easy to show. There are alternating lines of 8 syllables and 6 syllables, each beginning on a weak stress, and then alternating between succeeding strong and weak syllables. Say it out loud—putting a loud accent on the bold syllables:

in YOU o LORD my FEARS learn PEACE (8 syllables: weak, STRONG, wk, STR . . . )

though WHEN my PAS-sions STRAY (6 syllables: weak, STRONG, wk, STR . . . )

to TRUST in A-ny LES-ser THING

my HOPE is TORN a-WAY

This is how a hymn is written. I discipline all of my texts to be metrical. That might make you go bonkers at first, but I promise you that it is worth it in the end. Not only will it be pleasant to read as poetry, but it will also “call out” a good tune as you set it to music. Derek Webb was asked by a music student this last fall what his thoughts were about using meter. Derek told him that he had come to recognize its value, and used it quite frequently in his music now. In common meter, you can sing this stanza to a number o well-known hymn tunes. Try it to: Amazing Grace; O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing; O God our Help in Ages Past; or even to the theme song tune from Gilligan’s Island. A hymn tune is written to go with a particular meter. This is what we totally miss when we start writing praise songs without any sense of textual rhythm.

It is generally more pleasant to set two stanzas at a time musically instead of merely one. This allows the music to do more. The tunes we just sang are only one-stanza tunes. Melodies like: Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul; There is a Fountain filled with Blood, and others—are built to set two stanzas at a time. I return to the Psalm, and to write a second stanza.

I am still impressed with the weight of the first concept, so I will write another stanza on it. I want to use the line, “I have no good apart from you.”

What painful shame and loneliness

Is found when I rebel

I have no good apart from You

All others end in hell

Now, I am thinking of the use in corporate worship contexts, and I am going to strengthen this end by pluralizing the text in a unified way:

In You, O LORD, our fears learn peace

Though when our passions stray

To trust in any lesser thing

True hope is torn away [often replaced with false hope]

What painful shame and loneliness

Is found when we rebel

There is no good apart from You

Alone: we end in hell [this is more what I meant to say]

Next, I return to my tune at the top and begin to edit it. It is important that my weak and strong syllables correspond with weak and strong metrical positions in the music. This is what makes a good tune singable. (think about In Christ Alone, Before the Throne of God Above, How Deep the Father’s Love for Us, Dear Refuge of My Weary Soul, Thy Mercy My God, etc.) I will not go into the complicated aspects of securing a consistent rhythmic motive, an intuitive yet interesting harmonic progression, etc. (If you want to talk about how the notes became what they became, e-mail me: dmcgrew@bbc.edu )

Here is what I came up with:

I like it all but the BM7 chord (natural - VII), so I will eventually change that in the final draft. Otherwise, it’s OK. The tune is not too memorable, but the text has much to say. That’s important. A thousand years from now, it can still be set to a different tune because it is metrical!

I return to writing text. This time, I am particularly interested in focusing on the prayer aspect of the words. I want to remind those singing that this is prayer to God . . . not just a theology lesson. There is HOPE—living, listening, caring—when we pray: it is Christ himself who forever says to the sick who believe he can heal, “I am willing!” that hears our every prayer, however steeped in pain. God is near to the brokenhearted. The psalmist writes,

“As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones, in whom is all my delight. The sorrows of those who run after another god shall multiply; their drink offerings of blood I will not pour out or take their names on my lips.”

There is joy in his heart towards the brethren (saints): deep delight. I am faced with the realization that it is the saints (brothers and sisters in the LORD) towards whom my own anger so quickly arises; and often the godless towards whom I so quickly enforce the cultural platitude of “tolerance.” I am reminded of what C. S. Lewis wrote in his sermon Weight of Glory:

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners—no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.”

[You can read or download the entire sermon in PDF format here: http://www.doxaweb.com/assets/doxa.pdf ]

And there he is talking about all people—not merely Christians. How much more ought my charity be towards the brethren!! I decide to ask God, in my prayer meditation from Psalm 16, to have the grace to say the same thing as the psalmist. I write:

Delight our souls in godly friends

For often, LORD, we scorn

The sweet embrace of Christian arms,

Your Church redeemed, reborn

Destroy within your children, LORD,

A shrine for evil men—

The wolves, though whom we love through Christ,

Must not confuse with kin

Reading ahead through the Psalm, everything looks happier and happier! At this point, I will cadence on Db Major from the end of verse 3 through the end of the very last verse. I will set two more stanzas from the psalm in roughly the order that thoughts are presented in the text.

A dear friend surprised me last week when he said, “I’m a father.” He had recently gotten married, and at first I didn’t know how to take it. I thought, does he mean that he had a child a while ago, and is just now coming out with it? Or did he mean that he and his new wife secretly had a child and hid it from everyone? Then the truth struck me: she was pregnant, and he was simply testifying to the fact that a child is a child and father the father of that child at conception. When we say, as is the expected thing to say, “I am going to be a father,”—which would immediately have made sense to me—he actually said the truer thing: “I AM a father.”

I decided to go to Psalm 139 and read it again deeply. The phrases of the psalm are so appropriate for a young parent thinking about God’s paternal relationship to his children. The psalmist writes in this prayer, “You formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” (v. 13-14a)

I went to www.BibleGateway.com and printed off the text in English Standard Version:

1O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
2You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from afar.
3You search out my path and my lying down
   and are acquainted with all my ways.
4Even before a word is on my tongue,
   behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me.
6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is high; I cannot attain it.

7Where shall I go from your Spirit?
   Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
   If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9If I take the wings of the morning
   and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10even there your hand shall lead me,
   and your right hand shall hold me.
11If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me,
   and the light about me be night,"
12even the darkness is not dark to you;
   the night is bright as the day,
   for darkness is as light with you.

13For you formed my inward parts;
   you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
14I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
   my soul knows it very well.
15My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
   intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
   the days that were formed for me,
   when as yet there were none of them.

17How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
I awake, and I am still with you.

19Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
   O men of blood, depart from me!
20They speak against you with malicious intent;
   your enemies take your name in vain!
21Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
   And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22I hate them with complete hatred;
   I count them my enemies.

23Search me, O God, and know my heart!
Try me and know my thoughts!
24And see if there be any grievous way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting!

Although I print off the text here, I always use my open Bible to meditate on a metrical text. I do this more because I can easily see the whole passage. Also, it is easier on my eyes to “breathe” from staring at my computer screen.

I read and decide that verses 1–6 look like a unit of thought; verses 7–12 look like a unit of thought; verses 13–16 seem like a unit; and verses 17–24 seem like the last one.

I decide to write it to be sung to a strong tune: how about “Before the Throne of God Above.” That is metrically Long Meter (LM) doubled. (8.8.8.8—2x) I don’t think about the melody while I write. That is not important. If I am disciplined with meter, it will work. (Interestingly, when a couple of students pigeon-holed Derek Webb in the Underground Café after his concert here last fall, he admitted to being totally changed by the disciplining of his texts to meter. You’ll have to check out his website to see if his lyrics are _really_ all that affected by meter. I’m not totally convinced.)

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me! You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.”

Why do we still worry and pray like God doesn’t really know what is going on in our lives? Worse, why do we speak to God as though He stood in need of being informed about our latest changes, habits, desires, etc? See, the Psalmist testifies to God’s knowledge in the past tense and in an infinitely present & future sense.

[enter references to Psalm 90:8, where our sins are placed before God’s face and Exodus 33–34 where God does not allow Moses to see His face—but where Moses’ face is so bright when he comes down from seeing God that his face is to bright to behold]

Back to the text-setting:

Thinking about how so often we like to talk about “forgiveness” as implying “forgetting.” That’s nonsense. You don’t forget. Pretending to forget is just a soft lie. No, if we could truly “forget,” we would have no need to “forgive.” (!) Think about it. If God could just forget our sins instead of forgiving them, then why the sacrifices? Why the blood of an unblemished beast? Why Christ?!!

No. God remembers all things, and this is _why_ His mercy is so glorious. This is Why the gospel is . . . good news! I write:

Ok. I’m thinking that it rather lacks flow. The lines unfold a little like separate assertions. But I think I’ll handle that without too much of a fuss just now.

“You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.”

Wow. The humbling effect before this truth must not be missed. I love that last line, “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.” Yet how we thirst for a God’s-eye view of life. Think about how desperately we strive to know, “God’s will for our lives,” as in: “Who will I marry” or “Where does God want me to minister?” It seems that the psalmist admits that he has no business even thinking that he can figure this kind of stuff out.

I realize that my couplet needs to rhyme (“planned” does not rhyme with “us”), so I change “us” to “man.” Some might find this use of the masculine to refer to all of mankind offensive. I take their concerns to heart. For instance, it is instructive to see that where a passage like I Corinthians 1:8 refers to “brothers,” it is the plural Greek word adelphoi (translated “brothers” in the ESV) which refers to siblings in a family. In New Testament usage, depending on the context, adelphoi may refer either to men or to both men and women who are siblings in God’s family, the Church. I try to be clear where possible, but assume that the church gathered will understand “to wonderful for man” without an article identifying it as a particular person, as referring to mankind generically.

I sit in shock with the realization, as I have written, that God’s determinative hand has chosen this day and this hour for me to type these words. Be they artless or full of meaning, they are for God’s great and holy purposes. My mind begins to complain—hey! I could have been off doing something sinful just now. Would that mean that God planned that?!?!?!?

To which I must recite, “A thought too wonderful for man . . . a thought too wonderful for man.” I don’t think this means we should avoid thinking about it. Just that we should realize that we will try in vain to acquire a God’s eye view. Cross reference Romans 9 for a similar discussion.

“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night," even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.”

I cannot help but reflect on how many nights as a teenager I would walk alone in the warm summers, my head full of all kinds of overwhelming feelings. There was something about the darkness that made me feel safe from critical eyes. Yet even on the most penetratingly lonesome of nights I was always on the verge of prayer. No, I was not a saint by any means; rather, it has always been clear to me that God is very awake at all hours of the day and night.

Still, why did I not wander aimlessly during the day? Why night-time? Probably because it was the watching eyes of _people_ that I most sought to avoid. Still, countless are the sins of the night. I can count very few conscious sins committed while taking in a sunrise, but I could not count the many willful sins I have committed by the cover of night.

I think of Jesus speaking with Nicodemus in John 3:19–20, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come into the light, lest his deeds be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes into the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God.”

There is so much in this passage. Of course, Christ may not be literally speaking of daytime and nighttime with his references to “light” and “darkness.” John 1 does a clear job of opening up the word “light” to much more than physical interpretations. However, it is interesting that the imagery used reflects the innate desire of mankind to hide evil deeds in the darkness of night. It is so overwhelming that God sees in the darkness as though it were as bright as day!! A few lines from a song I wrote many years ago come to mind:

Obviously, Lazarus came to mind on the last few lines. What is more, I like the way that this prepares for the succeeding verses that deal with infant life. Kind of neat to go from “death” to “life,” isn’t it?!

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

So much for trying to argue over the previous stanza dealing with God’s total foreknowledge. “The days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.” Yeah. It’s all planned.

I am ready to type out this next stanza, but I want something other than” Be-fore” to begin it with since I used it earlier. I check out www.thesaurus.com

I think of all of the mothers and fathers who have lost children. It is hard to write these words. It is hard to face the pain of loss that many bear. Yet, there is not one square inch of all existence over which God does not say—through Jesus Christ—“MINE!” That is where our hopes and dreams begin and end. As Paul writes of Christ in II Corinthians 1:20, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” I think that if I had to choose a life verse, that would be it.

One word of complaint about my text so far: where the psalmist seems to get not only the fearfulness that results from viewing the sovereignty of God but the joy that comes from seeing His benevolence, I am weak on the second part. Notice how the psalmist has said, “Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” I am inclined to think that he means ‘wonderful’ in both the sense of ‘awesome; as well as the sense of ‘good.’ At the very least, other psalms by David would corroborate both together. So, I will consciously aim toward a brightening of the verses to include that.

Also, the rhyming of “dreamt” and “hands” is obviously not exact. Almost nothing helpful rhymes with “dreamt.” In cases like that, I suggest trying to come up with a couple of words that have a similar consonant / vowel relationship. The word literally sounds like “rem” + “T.” I think of “rent,” “ramped,” and eventually you can sort of hear how I found “hands” given the physiological line of descriptions. (faces, hearts, hands…)

“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. I awake, and I am still with you. Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God! O men of blood, depart from me! They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain! Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with complete hatred; I count them my enemies. Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”

Indeed, the psalmist waxes eloquent here on the goodness of God. Notice how emotional he gets: to the point of deep anger at the enemies of God. In his work, The Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards writes, “And so as to hatred and zeal; when these are from right principles, they are against sin in general in some proportion to the degree of sinfulness.” A love for righteousness will by its very nature inform a righteous hatred for evil.

But see where the psalmist goes wit that hatred: straight to the fear that he might harbor some grievous way in his own soul, thus making him part of the evil he so hates. This is CRUCIAL for believers! We must always turn our hatred for evil into a fear of God. This keeps evil men from becoming the center of our affections! Remain God-centered; that is what the psalmist demonstrates.

I remember one Sunday morning while I was going to pick up my fiancée for church, I had the radio on to check out the news. A news report came on that a man who had committed awful, shameful crimes had been found and arrested by police. Among the crimes he was charged with was one of tying a teenage girl to a tree and raping her to death.

can’t tell you how much that made my blood boil. I could have killed him in cold blood when that report ended. I picked up my fiancée, and drove to church with a great blackness over my soul. Of course, she asked what was wrong. So I told her. She was quiet. I immediately felt bad for ruining her morning with both the story and my mood. At least, I thought, I ought to solicit from her a sympathetic emotion. I tried to coax her towards my level of anger. “What should I do if we have a daughter and this happens to her?!” I asked. She was quiet; then, she slowly spoke.

I’ll never forget how she spoke of LOVE. She spoke of God’s love in the face of our wickedness. She softly reminded me, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ dies for us.” [Romans 5:6–8] This is the posture of a Christian towards evil men: LOVE. Without righteous judgment, there is no mercy; without great evil, there is no overwhelming grace.

Now, after singing through it a few times, I have a couple of changes that need to be made. The second and third stanzas are not first person-plural, communicative confession to God. It is not a prayer. So, I go ahead and rewrite it: