The song Seven Times Seven Times Seventy-seven is based on The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant in Matthew 18. The title of the song comes from Jesus response to a question from Peter.
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Matthew 18:21-22
I wanted to try something new with my video for Wrestle With the Angels. If you have watched it, you will see that I am singing the song in front of a television that is shows a professional wrestling program. You might notice that the video on the television looks like it is sped up. My movements might also seem a little odd.
My song Neighbor is one of the most complex projects from my album Speaking in Tongues. It has five vocal parts that I overdubbed 4 times each during the recording. I wanted to put together a video for this song that would feature me singing each of the parts. I searched for easy to use software that would allow me to put this together. After a few tries with other software, I settled on iMovie on my iPhone. I did put together some practice videos to make sure that my face would be centered in the views. In the practice video, I just used one video and I put it in multiple frames to discover that stacking them first worked better than putting them side by side. The video in the center shot was the most difficult to decide how to position.
I grew up listening to comedy albums. I listened to them enough to have some comedian’s routines memorized. It would be hard to not be influenced by some of these routines even when they weren’t the most spiritual stories. Here are three songs that I can site direct influences from comedy routines.
For many of my songs, I try and go against the grain of normal thinking about familiar Bible Stories. The idea for A Cave in Bethlehem came from the fact that many of the stables in the region where Jesus was born were caves instead of the wooden structures we see in modern nativity scenes. I also thought about the barns and stables that I have been in. They are not clean environments. Just the thought of putting a baby in a manger with hay isn’t something we would want to do today.
My pastor was preaching a sermon about Pentecost. He was discussing speaking in tongues. My mind tends to drift during some sermons and this was one of those times. I began thinking of how the concept of speaking in tongues is different in the story from Acts than it is in later parts of scripture and even what we typically experience today.
Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”
Some, however, made fun of them and said, “They have had too much wine.”
Acts 2:2-13
Several years ago, I wrote a song called The Belly of the Whale. It was based on the familiar story from the first three chapters of the book of Jonah. In the story, Jonah is called to preach to the people of Nineveh, he runs away from God, is swallow by a whale, is spit up after three days and he finally goes to Nineveh to preach where the people turn to God. My song stopped at this point in the story. This is also the point where most people stop when they are telling the story of Jonah. But there is one more chapter in the book.
My song Neighbor is based on the parable of the Good Samaritan. The song has 5 verses and each verse has its own melody. It works like a round. Each verse gives voice to a different person related to the parable.
Miriam sang to them:
“Sing to the Lord,
for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
he has hurled into the sea.”
-Exodus 15:21
This verse of scripture is identified at Mariam’s Song in most of my Bibles. The verses prior to it in Exodus 15 are identified as Moses Song. Moses Song is an account of crossing the Red Sea while Mariam’s Song focuses on Pharaoh’s army being destroyed. These songs immediate follow that Exodus account of the crossing of the Red Sea. I was inspired by Mariam’s Song to write a chorus for a song about this story. Here is my chorus:
Oh no! What do I see?
Pharaoh’s chariots coming after me.
Praise the Lord, Mighty is He
The horse and the rider drowned in the Red Sea
I decided that I wanted to write a song about the Bible verse, “the lion will lie down with the lamb.” It turns out that this is one of those things everyone thinks is in the Bible but its not. The closest thing to this is in the eleventh chapter of the book of Isaiah. In verse 6 it says,
“The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.”
I didn’t let this discourage me from going ahead and writing a song about this passage of prophesy about a coming Messiah. I wanted to stick with the original groupings of animals in the verses. I decided that whenever I performed this song, I would emphasize the fact that this is different from what everyone thinks is in the Bible. I think it helps people pay more attention to what the scripture and ultimately what the song has to say.