Stories

I was given a challenge for this song, and since I rarely back down from a challenge, I jumped into it with all the courage of a duckling jumping into a pond for the first time—nervous, a little unsure of what I was getting myself into, but excited for the experience.

Some of my bandmates had been looking ahead at our pastor's upcoming messages so they could pick relevant songs for the services. One of the messages was titled "Murder in the Vineyard," based on Matthew 21:33–46. Apparently, they found the title amusing enough that they started laughing among themselves and thought, as a joke, about asking me to write a song to go along with it.

So eventually the challenge made its way to me.

At the time, I had absolutely no idea what Matthew 21:33–46 was about. But I thought, Why not? How hard could it be?

Then I read it. Good grief!! What a story, what have I gotten myself into.

Jesus tells a story about a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress, built a watchtower, leased it to tenants, and then went away on a journey.

"There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower." — Matthew 21:33

When harvest time came, the owner sent his servants to collect the fruit that belonged to him. Instead of giving the owner what was rightfully his, the tenants attacked the servants. They beat one, killed another, and stoned another.

So the owner sent more servants. The tenants treated them the same way.

Finally, the owner sent his son.

But when the tenants saw the son, they decided that if they killed the heir, perhaps they could keep the inheritance for themselves.

So they threw him outside the vineyard and killed him.

At that point I thought, Well, now I understand why the pastor called the message "Murder in the Vineyard."

The problem was that I still had no idea what the story actually meant.

I vaguely remembered hearing the parable before, but reading it by itself, it seemed like a strange story about a very patient landowner and some unbelievably wicked tenants. I knew there had to be something deeper going on, so out came the study Bible, and another study Bible, and a study reference book, and another reference book. Yes, I went through four books and explanations about the parable before the picture fully became clear.

That was when the whole passage began to open up.

The vineyard wasn't simply a vineyard.

It represented God's people.

The image itself wasn't new. Hundreds of years earlier, Isaiah had described Israel as the Lord's vineyard:

"The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the nation of Israel, and the people of Judah are the vines he delighted in." — Isaiah 5:7

God had planted His people, protected them, provided for them, and called them to belong to Him.

That became the opening thought of the song:

You planted a people, You called them Your own You gave them Your promise, Your law and Your home.

The tenants represented the religious leaders—the chief priests and elders who had been entrusted with the spiritual care of the people.

They were supposed to be shepherds.

They were supposed to teach the people God's Word, lead them toward obedience, encourage faith, and point their hearts back toward the One who had called them His own.

God had never given them ownership of His people.

He had given them stewardship.

That difference became one of the central ideas of the song:

Lord, the vineyard is Yours, the people are Yours The harvest was never ours to possess.

The problem Jesus was confronting was that the religious leaders had begun acting as though the vineyard belonged to them.

Instead of using their position to lead people toward God, they had built a religious system that protected their own authority, position, and influence. Jesus repeatedly challenged leaders who cared more about appearances, recognition, and their own status than about the people they were supposed to serve.

In Matthew 23, Jesus says of the teachers of the law and Pharisees:

"Everything they do is done for people to see." — Matthew 23:5

And later:

"They love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues." — Matthew 23:6

That helped shape another part of the lyric:

But power grew sweeter than serving Your name The tenants forgot You and sought only fame They guarded their places, their titles and wealth.

Then there were the servants the landowner kept sending.

Those servants represented the prophets God had sent throughout Israel's history.

Again and again, God sent men to call His people back to Him. Some were ignored. Some were mocked. Some were imprisoned. Some were killed.

Jesus later said to Jerusalem:

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you…" — Matthew 23:37

God kept reaching.

He kept calling.

He kept sending messengers.

That became the second verse:

You sent them the prophets to call them back home But those who held power had hearts that would roam They silenced the servants and hardened their hearts Still You kept waiting for their faith to start.

Then comes the part of the parable that changes everything.

The landowner says, I will send my son.

The son is Jesus.

And suddenly I realized that Jesus wasn't simply telling these religious leaders an interesting story.

He was telling them what they were about to do.

He was standing in front of the chief priests and elders, describing a vineyard owner whose tenants rejected his servants and eventually murdered his son.

And within days, those same religious leaders would help arrange Jesus' death.

Even the detail that the son was taken outside the vineyard is striking.

Matthew 21:39 says:

"So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him."

Jesus, too, was taken outside the city to be crucified. Hebrews later says:

"And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood." — Hebrews 13:12

What sounded at first like a strange story about a vineyard was actually Jesus describing His own rejection and death before it happened.

That realization gave the second half of the song its direction:

Then finally You said, "I will send them My Son" "Surely they'll honor the One that I love" But outside the vineyard His life was undone And they killed Him believing their kingdom was won.

But the story doesn't end with murder.

Jesus immediately points the religious leaders to Psalm 118:

"The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes." — Matthew 21:42; Psalm 118:22–23

The builders rejected the stone.

God made Him the cornerstone.

The religious leaders thought they could remove Jesus and protect their kingdom.

Instead, God made Jesus the foundation of His Kingdom.

That is why the chorus ends:

But what they cast down, You lifted on high Jesus is forever, our Cornerstone.

And that is also where this parable stopped being merely a warning to people who lived two thousand years ago.

It became a warning to me.

And perhaps to all of us who serve in churches, ministries, worship teams, classrooms, leadership positions, or anywhere else God has entrusted people to our care.

The vineyard still belongs to God.

The people still belong to God.

The ministry belongs to God.

The church belongs to God.

The harvest belongs to God.

We are tenants, servants, shepherds and stewards.

We are not the owner.

Paul expressed the same idea when he wrote:

"I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God has been making it grow." — 1 Corinthians 3:6

And again:

"For we are co-workers in God's service; you are God's field, God's building." — 1 Corinthians 3:9

That became the prayer in the bridge:

May we never forget for who the vineyard belongs May we never mistake what You've given for us Teach us to listen whenever You call.

Because there is always a temptation to take something God has allowed us to care for and slowly begin treating it as though it belongs to us.

Our church.

Our ministry.

Our music.

Our position.

Our people.

Our way.

And before long, we can become so busy protecting what we think is ours that we begin resisting the very God who gave it to us.

So the bridge continues:

Break every kingdom we build for ourselves For You are the Owner, and Jesus the heir And everything Lord, belongs to You.

That may be the biggest lesson I took away from Matthew 21.

The tenants forgot who owned the vineyard.

And once they forgot that, everything else began to fall apart.

Jesus later says:

"The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit." — Matthew 21:43

God isn't looking for people who simply occupy His vineyard.

He is looking for people who bear fruit in it.

People who love Him.

People who love one another.

People who understand that whatever position, ministry, gift, influence, or opportunity they have been given is something entrusted to them—not something they own.

So what began as a joke among a few bandmates about challenging me to write a song called "Murder in the Vineyard" turned into something much more serious than I expected.

I went into the passage like that little duckling jumping into the pond—unsure what was below the surface.

What I found was a warning about pride, power, stewardship, and the danger of building our own kingdom inside God's vineyard.

But I also found the Gospel.

The Son was rejected.

The Son was taken outside the vineyard.

The Son was killed.

But the stone they rejected did not stay rejected.

God raised Him up.

And now:

The stone once rejected now stands tall The Rock of salvation is the hope for us all So build us together on nothing but Christ Jesus forever is our Cornerstone.

The vineyard is His.

The people are His.

The harvest is His.

And everything, Lord, belongs to You.

As a final comment, and as I've described on the "About" page of this website, I write all of my own songs. Sometimes the lyrics come to me out of the blue, sometimes it's a melody, and every once in a while I'm fortunate enough to get both at the same time. Once the lyrics are written, I normally begin working out the melody and arrangement by playing and recording the primary instruments myself in a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). After plenty of experimenting, changing, rearranging, deleting, and starting over, a final demo eventually begins to take shape. At that point, I use an AI program to polish the recording and add the final vocals.

This song, however, didn't follow my usual path.

I wrote the lyrics much as I normally would—although this one required a little more biblical research than most—but I was working with an unusually short deadline of only a few days. There simply wasn't enough time to go through my normal process of developing the melody and building the arrangement from scratch, so I sent the finished lyrics directly to AI.

Then came the prompting. Lots and lots of prompting.

I gave it fairly detailed instructions about what I wanted, most of which it seemed quite determined to ignore, and it produced a song that I really didn't like. So I tried again. And again. And again. After somewhere around twenty attempts, along with numerous changes to the prompts, arrangements, styles, and instructions, we finally arrived at the version you can listen to today.

I suppose you could say I cheated on the melody this time. It was certainly faster than my normal way of writing a song, but I can't honestly say it was easier. And while AI can be an amazing tool, bypassing the process of sitting down with an instrument, searching for the right chords, discovering a melody, and watching a song slowly come to life stripped away much of the part I enjoy most.

So, faster? Absolutely.

Easier? Not really.

As much fun? Not even close.

“Just One Touch” is based on one of those stories in Scripture that has stayed with me for years — the story of the woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve long years. Her story appears in Matthew 9:20–22, Mark 5:25–34, and Luke 8:43–48, but Mark gives us the most detailed picture of what she had endured.

Mark tells us that she had “suffered many things of many physicians” and had spent everything she had trying to get well, yet instead of improving, she had only grown worse (Mark 5:26).

Twelve years.

Twelve years of pain. Twelve years of disappointment. Twelve years of going from one doctor to another, hoping that maybe this time someone would have an answer. By the time she heard about Jesus, she had exhausted not only her money, but probably every earthly option she knew.

Yet somewhere beneath all that disappointment, a little bit of hope was still alive.

She had heard about Jesus.

Mark tells us that she came up behind Him in the crowd because she believed, “If I may touch but His clothes, I shall be whole” (Mark 5:28).

She wasn’t asking Jesus to stop everything and come to her house. She wasn’t demanding an explanation for why she had suffered for twelve years. She wasn’t even asking Him to lay His hands on her.

She simply believed that if she could get close enough — if she could somehow push through that crowd and touch even the edge of His garment — that would be enough.

That image has fascinated me for a very long time.

Back in the early 1980s, I came across a song written by Bruce Hibbard in 1977 called “Hem of His Garment.” I sang that song several times over the years in church and even sang it at my grandma’s funeral. For some reason, that song has always stayed with me. Maybe “haunted” is the right word — not in a bad way, but in the sense that it never completely left my mind.

Interestingly, I never heard Bruce Hibbard’s original recording at the time. The version I learned was sung by a female artist, and despite searching over the years, I have never been able to determine who she was.

Still, the message remained.

If I could just touch the hem of His garment.

For several years I had thought about writing my own song around that story. The idea would surface every now and then, but I never seemed to find the words that made me feel it was time to write it.

Then, a few months ago, I was sitting at my desk thinking about possible lyrics and looking for a little inspiration. For no particular reason, I opened a video from Sadie Robertson Huff — yes, the same Sadie Robertson from Duck Dynasty. She has become a gifted Christian speaker and spends much of her time sharing the Gospel.

Of all the things she could have been talking about, almost the first words I heard were about a woman who had suffered for twelve years and believed she only needed to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe.

Her message wasn’t even primarily about that woman. She was simply using the story as an example of perseverance and faith.

But sitting there at my desk, thinking about writing this very song, those words stopped me cold.

I remember thinking, Well, Lord, I guess You couldn’t make that much clearer.

Maybe someone else would call it coincidence. I didn’t.

Sometimes God gets our attention with thunder, and sometimes He does it with one sentence heard at exactly the right moment.

So I started writing.

The first verse of “Just One Touch” tries to place the listener inside that woman’s story:

Twelve years of waiting, Twelve years of pain, I had spent all I carried, But nothing had changed.

I deliberately wrote that first verse from her point of view because I wanted the listener to feel the desperation of those twelve years. By the time she reached Jesus, she wasn’t walking toward Him with a backup plan. She had already tried everything else.

All she had left was faith.

And sometimes faith is enough to make you push through a crowd.

The Bible says that when she touched His garment, “straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up” (Mark 5:29). At that same moment, Jesus stopped.

In a crowd pressing against Him from every direction, Jesus asked: “Who touched My clothes?” — Mark 5:30

The disciples must have thought that was a strange question. Everybody was touching Him. They were surrounded by people.

But this touch was different.

This wasn’t the accidental touch of someone caught in a crowd.

This was a touch of faith.

Jesus knew that power had gone out from Him, and when the frightened woman finally came forward and told Him what she had done, He didn’t rebuke her.

He called her Daughter.

“Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace.” — Mark 5:34

I love that.

After twelve years of being known by her illness, Jesus called her Daughter.

She had probably spent years being identified by what was wrong with her. Jesus reminded her whose she was.

That thought became especially important as the song developed.

The second verse moves away from simply retelling her story and brings it into our own lives.

Most of us aren’t pushing through a first-century crowd trying to reach Jesus, but every one of us carries something. Some burdens are obvious. Others are hidden so deeply that the people sitting beside us in church may never know they’re there.

We carry scars. We carry regret. We carry grief. We carry disappointment. We carry prayers that seem unanswered and wounds we have learned how to hide.

Scripture reminds us that none of those things are hidden from God.

“Thou hast searched me, and known me.” — Psalm 139:1

Jesus didn’t merely know that somebody had touched Him. He knew her. And He knows us the same way.

The chorus became my prayer: Lord, let me touch the hem of Your garment. Let me come to You, Lord. I believe there is healing in Your touch. I believe there is hope in Your hands.

The point isn’t really the garment. The power wasn’t in a piece of cloth. The power was in Jesus.

The woman wasn’t healed because she discovered a magical robe. She was healed because her faith reached toward the One wearing it.

Sometimes we become so focused on the miracle we’re asking for that we can forget the One we’re asking. The greatest promise of the Gospel isn’t that every earthly problem will disappear exactly when we want it to. The promise is that Jesus will meet us there.

Hebrews tells us: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” — Hebrews 4:16

That is what “Just One Touch” is really about.

Coming close. Reaching out. Trusting when we don’t have anything else to stand on.

The lyric says: I have nothing to offer but surrender, I have nothing to stand on but my faith.

There are times when surrender is all we have left to bring. And that’s enough.

The bridge goes back to that moment in the crowd when Jesus turned toward the woman: “Lord, I reached out to touch You, I felt Your power surge through, You turned and said, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you,’ and my pain drained away.”

But from there, the song begins to grow beyond one woman’s miracle. Every promise You have spoken finds its answer, Lord, in You.

That line comes from 2 Corinthians 1:20: “For all the promises of God in Him are yea, and in Him Amen.”

Our hope isn’t found in trying harder to force an outcome. Our hope is found in Christ.

That is why the final chorus becomes less about the woman in the crowd and more about all of us: One touch can break every stronghold. One touch can awaken the soul. One touch from my Lord Jesus. One touch, and You make me whole.

I don’t believe that means Christians will never be sick, never suffer, or receive every physical healing they ask for in this life. Scripture itself shows faithful people walking through suffering.

But I do believe Jesus still heals.

Sometimes He heals the body. Sometimes He heals the heart. Sometimes He repairs something inside us that nobody else can even see. Sometimes the circumstance doesn’t immediately change, but the person walking through it does. And sometimes grace is the miracle.

Paul pleaded with God three times to remove the thorn he carried, but God’s answer was: “My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” — 2 Corinthians 12:9

That verse fits this song almost perfectly.

The woman reached for healing and received it instantly. Others reach for Jesus and find the strength to endure another day. Either way, the answer is found in drawing closer to Him.

After twelve years, that woman could have stayed home. She could have decided she had already tried enough. She could have looked at the size of the crowd and turned around.

But she didn’t.

She kept moving toward Jesus.

That’s perseverance. That’s faith.

And maybe that’s the part of this story that has stayed with me all these years.

You don’t have to understand everything. You don’t have to have everything figured out. You don’t even have to know exactly what Jesus is going to do.

Sometimes you simply have to keep moving toward Him.

Reach through the crowd. Reach through the disappointment. Reach through the fear. Reach through the years of unanswered questions.

Because the same Jesus who stopped for one hurting woman in a crowd is still the Jesus who sees the hurting today. And when we feel lost among everyone else around us, He still knows our name.

So the song ends with a simple prayer: I am reaching, I am believing. Lord, I lay down my burdens and fear.

Because after everything that woman had tried, everything she had lost, and everything she had endured, her life changed in a single moment.

She reached out in faith.

And all it took was… Just One Touch.

A dedication of Love

As a final note, I mentioned at the beginning of this story that our keyboard player and I had worked on a song that inspired this song a few times over the last couple of years. Over the last week she has become gravely ill, which is why I had to finish this song. All our prayers are with her to bring her back to us, but as bad as we want to keep her in our lives, we know Jesus may need her more. So Shann, I’m going to say that finishing this song is your fault. I truly hope you get a chance to hear it.

Sometimes odd thoughts pop into my head that don't make much sense at the time, but if I let them roll around in there long enough, eventually I begin to understand why they showed up. "Bring What You've Got" started with one of those thoughts.

For some reason, I kept thinking about the story in John 6 where Jesus feeds five thousand people with five barley loaves and two small fish. I knew the story well enough. A huge crowd had followed Jesus, evening was coming, everybody was hungry, and the disciples had no idea how they were going to feed that many people.

Over the last two weeks my Pastor's message was about being good neighbors. Getting to know your neighbors and helping out your neighbor in a time of need. Suddenly I understood why the story had popped into my head — it was to add a little depth to the Pastor's message with a scriptural reference of neighbors taking care of each other. Yes, Jesus provided the miracle, but the people made it happen.

In the story, Andrew found a boy willing to share his bounty.

"Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?" — John 6:9

That question may be one of my favorite parts of the story. How far will they go among so many?

From a practical standpoint, not very far.

But the boy gave Jesus what he had.

Jesus took it, gave thanks, and distributed it to the people. John tells us that everyone ate "as much as they wanted" (John 6:11). When the meal was finished, the disciples gathered up twelve baskets of leftovers — which I think that number is directly related to the twelve tribes Moses brought out of bondage. God fed the many with Manna which appeared out of nowhere.

Now at this point that is usually where we stop telling the story of the loaves and fishes.

But me being me — with what I sometimes call my "Martha personality," always having to be doing something — my brain went somewhere else entirely.

I started thinking about the logistics.

I wasn't questioning the miracle. Jesus multiplying five loaves and two fish is just another Tuesday for Him. I was wondering about everything that happened between Jesus blessed the food and five thousand people ate supper.

Because I'm fairly certain those people weren't eating first-century sushi and passing whole fish around taking bites out of them.

Somebody had to prepare the food.

And if somebody cooked the fish, somebody had to build a fire.

Before somebody built the fire, somebody had to gather firewood.

Somebody had to clean the fish.

Somebody had to break the bread.

Somebody had to carry it.

Somebody had to pass it around.

And when supper was over, somebody probably looked around at the mess and said, "Well, I guess we'd better clean this up." And you and I both know it was the church ladies — they always do all the hard work.

That's when the whole scene started playing like a movie in my head.

I could see maybe 250 little fires scattered across the hillside with twenty people gathered around each one. I could see one group cleaning fish, another breaking bread, others carrying baskets from place to place. I could imagine the disciples moving through the crowd while Jesus walked among them, talking, teaching, laughing, encouraging people, and making sure everyone had enough.

In my imagination, it became something like a first-century Woodstock — with only one act, and He was worth coming to see.

Of course, Scripture doesn't tell us that there were cooking stations or campfires. That part is simply my imagination filling in the practical details. But Scripture does tell us something important that is easy to overlook: Jesus involved people in the miracle.

He could have made food appear instantly in every person's hands.

Instead, the boy brought what he had.

Jesus blessed it.

The disciples distributed it.

The people received it.

Then Jesus told His disciples: "Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted." — John 6:12

Even after the miracle, there was work to do.

That became the heart of the song.

We sometimes think serving God has to mean doing something big, visible, or impressive. We notice the person standing on the stage, the missionary traveling overseas, the pastor preaching the sermon, or the person whose name everybody knows.

But the Kingdom of God has always been full of people doing things nobody applauds.

Paul wrote: "There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord." — 1 Corinthians 12:5

And Peter said: "Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others." — 1 Peter 4:10

That word whatever matters to me.

Whatever you have. Whatever you can do. Whatever God has placed in your hands.

Maybe your gift is preaching.

Maybe it's singing.

Maybe it's cooking.

Maybe it's carrying baskets.

Maybe it's gathering firewood.

Maybe it's cleaning up after everybody else has gone home.

Jesus said: "Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant." — Matthew 20:26

Most acts of service will never make headlines. Some of the most important people in the Kingdom may be people whose names we will never know.

That little boy in John 6 is a perfect example. John doesn't tell us his name.

We know what he brought.

We know what Jesus did with it.

But we don't know his name.

And somehow, I love that.

The miracle wasn't about the boy becoming famous. It was about the boy being willing.

He didn't have enough to feed five thousand people.

He simply had something he was willing to give Jesus.

That is a lesson we need to remember.

God doesn't necessarily ask us to have enough.

He asks us to be willing to place what we do have into His hands.

Moses had a staff.

David had a sling.

A widow had a little oil.

Another widow had two small coins.

And one unnamed boy had five barley loaves and two fish.

None of it looked like much until it was surrendered to God.

Zechariah asks: "Who dares despise the day of small things?" — Zechariah 4:10

Maybe that is the simplest explanation of "Bring What You've Got."

Don't wait until you think you have enough.

Don't wait until you think your gift is important enough.

Don't assume somebody else's contribution matters more than yours.

Bring the bread.

Carry the baskets.

Gather the wood.

Build the fire.

Pass the plate.

Clean up afterward.

Bring what you've got and give what you can.

Because something that looks small in our hands can become something entirely different when we place it in the hands of Jesus.

And when the meal is over, the crowd is full, twelve baskets are left sitting on the hillside, and everybody is still talking about the miracle…

But somebody is going to have to do the dishes.

Decades ago, I came across a story about the slow unraveling of the American family. It described the many small changes families have experienced over the years—changes that continue even today—and traced much of that shift back to the 1940s and World War II.

During the war, families were separated out of necessity. Millions of men were called away to serve, while many of the women who remained behind entered factories and manufacturing plants to support the war effort. For perhaps the first time in American history, families were being pulled apart on such a large scale, not because of westward expansion or the pursuit of a better life, but because the country required it. As a result, millions of children were left in the care of people outside their families, or in some cases, were forced to look after themselves.

That separation weakened some of the ties that had traditionally held families together. It was as though individual threads were being pulled from a tapestry that had wrapped around and protected the family, one thread at a time.

After the war, America entered another period of rapid growth and expansion. Greater prosperity, faster transportation, and improving communication made it easier for people to move away from their parents, grandparents, and ancestral homes. Families scattered across the country in search of opportunity. Over time, moving away from home became more than a possibility; it came to be viewed almost as a normal rite of passage.

This idea has always stayed with me as one of the sadder parts of the American story—the belief that personal growth and success often require us to move away from the people and places that formed us. I have never felt a strong desire to leave in search of greener pastures. I have always believed my own pastures were green enough.

The image of unraveling connections has remained with me through the years. A few weeks ago, my pastor said something in her message about pulling threads. As often happens, those words awakened the lyric-writing side of my mind.

The thought began to shift from the unraveling of the family to the distractions that can slowly unravel our awareness of the love and grace God has given us. Each distraction pulls another thread. Little by little, the blanket of grace that once seemed warm and secure can become thin, worn, and full of holes.

But Scripture reminds us that the One who created us is also able to restore us.

Psalm 139:13 says, "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." I love that picture because it tells us that God was a weaver long before any of the threads of our lives began to come loose. He knows every strand because He is the One who put them together in the first place.

And when life does begin to unravel, God does not throw the damaged fabric away. Psalm 147:3 tells us, "He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds." Psalm 23:3 says simply, "He restores my soul." Those verses remind me that restoration is part of God's nature. He takes what is torn, wounded, worn, or broken and begins the patient work of putting it back together.

Perhaps one of the clearest examples comes from the woman who reached through the crowd simply to touch the garment of Jesus. After years of suffering, Jesus told her, "Daughter, thy faith hath made thee whole" (Mark 5:34, KJV). He did not merely ease her pain. He made her whole.

That may be the greatest truth behind the image of the Master Weaver. We can allow the worries of life, our ambitions, our failures, our busyness, and a thousand other distractions to pull at the threads God so carefully placed within us. Sometimes we do not even notice the damage until we begin to feel the cold coming through the holes.

But God still knows where every thread belongs.

From that image came the idea for this song. I wanted it to feel like a prayer—a quiet plea to God, the Master Weaver, asking Him to gather the loose and broken threads of our lives and weave them together again, restoring the covering of His love and grace.

Because the God who first knit us together is still able to mend what has been torn.

He can bind the wounds.

He can restore the soul.

And He can make us whole again.

The idea for "Not the Woman God Gave Me" came from a TikTok video, of all places. The video told the story of a conversation between a young man and his grandfather.

The young man was considering marriage and asked his grandfather how he had managed to love the same woman for sixty years. To the young man's surprise, his grandfather replied that he had not.

He went on to offer some of the best advice a young man could receive about life, marriage, and love. He explained that the woman he fell in love with at twenty was not the same woman he was living with at thirty. By then, she had become wiser, more confident, more determined, and more self-aware than the giggling young woman he had married. He had to decide whether he was willing to love the woman she had become.

The same was true at forty. She was no longer the woman she had been at thirty, and once again, he had a choice to make: would he continue to love this new version of her?

Although the story didn't say it, she had the same choice. The man she married at twenty was not the same man she was living with at thirty, forty, or beyond either. We all change as the years pass. We grow, mature, struggle, heal, and become new versions of ourselves. Hopefully, those changes are for the better, but the people closest to us must still decide whether they will continue to love us, accept us, and choose us.

That thought reminds me of something Scripture says about marriage from the very beginning. Genesis 2:24 tells us that a husband and wife are joined together and "become one flesh." Jesus repeated that truth in Mark 10:9 when He said, "Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

I don't think becoming one means that two people stop changing. If anything, marriage gives us a front-row seat to one another's changes. We watch each other grow older. We see strength develop where there used to be uncertainty. We see scars appear where life has been hard. We see dreams change, priorities shift, and personalities mature. The person standing beside us years later may be very different from the person who first stood beside us at the altar.

Yet God calls us to continue walking together.

Ecclesiastes 4:9 says, "Two are better than one," because they can help one another when one falls. A few verses later it says, "A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." I have always loved that picture of marriage: two lives intertwined with God running through the middle of them. The individual threads may change with age and experience, but when God remains woven into the relationship, the bond can become stronger rather than weaker.

Paul gives us another picture of that kind of love in 1 Corinthians 13. He tells us that love "always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." Then he gives us three simple words that may be among the most important words ever written about marriage: "Love never fails."

That does not mean marriage is always easy. It means real love keeps choosing.

It chooses patience when life changes us.

It chooses forgiveness when we fail one another.

It chooses grace when the person beside us is going through a season we do not completely understand.

And sometimes it simply says, "You are different than you were when I married you, but I still choose you."

I held on to that grandfather's story for a long time because I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to turn it into a love letter to my wife—a way of telling her that through every season, every change, and every new chapter of our lives, I still choose her.

Ephesians 5:25 tells husbands to "love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." That is an incredibly high standard. It describes a love based not simply on emotion, but on commitment, sacrifice, grace, and the decision to put another person ahead of yourself.

After enough years together, maybe that is what marriage really becomes. Not simply loving the person God gave you decades ago, but learning to love the person God is still shaping today.

She may not be the same woman God gave me all those years ago.

She is wiser now. Stronger. More confident. More experienced. Life has shaped her in ways neither one of us could have imagined when we were younger.

And I am certainly not the same man she married either.

But through all those years and all those changes, God has allowed us to grow beside one another instead of apart from one another.

So she may not be the same woman God gave me all those years ago, but she is still the woman I choose today.

And she hasn't kicked me to the curb yet, so I guess she still chooses me too.

This song seemed to come completely out of the blue. I had not been thinking about dragons, Satan, evil, or anything remotely related. I am blaming this one on our new pastor.

Her first message at Mulvane United Methodist Church was about the journey that brought her to us. She spoke about how the road ahead is often unknown, including her journey to us, which was never expected. Much like the unexplored regions on ancient maps, those uncharted places were sometimes marked with warnings such as, "Dragons be here," or "Do not travel here," suggesting that danger might be waiting just beyond the edge of what was known.

I'm not suggesting danger lurks at Mulvane United Methodist Church, although the building is over 100 years old, and it does have some dark, scary places.

I believe the point of her message was that we cannot always know what lies ahead, so we must learn to trust God as we travel the path before us. Proverbs 3:5–6 tells us, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight." That seems especially appropriate when we are standing at the edge of our own map and cannot see what comes next.

At least, I think that was the point of her sermon. I can't say for certain because the moment she said, "Dragons be here," the lyric-writing side of my brain took over. While I was supposed to be listening to the rest of the sermon, I was already building a story and writing song lyrics in my head.

The story forming in my mind was really about the same truth I believed she was trying to share. The road before us can be long, uncertain, dark, and even dangerous. It immediately reminded me of Psalm 23: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me."

That verse does not promise there will be no valley. It does not promise there will be no darkness. It promises that we will not walk through it alone.

That same thought appears again and again throughout Scripture. Isaiah 41:10 says, "Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God." God does not always tell us what is waiting around the next bend. Instead, He tells us Who will be there when we arrive.

That became one of the central ideas behind the song. When God walks beside us, we do not need to fear what waits beyond the edge of the map. He is our armor, our shield, and our strength.

Psalm 28:7 says, "The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped." And Ephesians 6 tells us to "put on the full armor of God" so that we can stand against the schemes of evil. Paul describes the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. That imagery fit perfectly with the picture that was already forming in my mind: God's people moving into unknown territory, not helpless or unprotected, but clothed in His armor.

And then there are the dragons themselves.

Scripture actually uses the imagery of dragons, serpents, and great beasts as symbols of evil and chaos. Revelation 12:9 describes "the great dragon" as the ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan. But Scripture never presents the dragon as equal to God. Evil may be frightening, powerful, and dangerous, but it is never beyond God's authority.

Psalm 91 gives us another powerful image: "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet." The message is not that we should go looking for dragons. The message is that when God leads us into difficult places, the things that terrify us do not have the final word.

God does.

In my head, I could already hear the music—a dark, ominous melody with a heavy, deliberate beat, creating an almost Vincent Price-like feel. The song came together quicker than most other songs I have written. In many ways, it seemed to write itself.

I have found that songwriting often happens in one of two ways. Some songs fall naturally into place, with the lyrics, melody and message arriving almost fully formed. Others are a real struggle, requiring a great deal of thought, revision, patience, more revision, more patience, a little time on the porch swing, and more revision.

My theory is that God has a hand in both versions of the process.

Perhaps the songs that come easily are the ones whose message He believes I am ready to understand. The difficult ones may be His way of making me slow down, wrestle with the meaning, and learn what I have not yet fully grasped. Proverbs 16:9 says, "In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps." I think that can apply to songwriting just as easily as it applies to the rest of life.

Sometimes, I may simply be missing the point altogether, and the struggle becomes part of the lesson.

Either way, I feel blessed that He sees fit to use me at all.

Maybe that is the larger lesson behind "Dragons."

We spend a great deal of time wanting God to show us the entire map. We want to know where the road leads, what dangers are waiting, and how everything is going to turn out. But faith rarely works that way.

God often gives us enough light for the next step.

Psalm 119:105 says, "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." A lamp does not illuminate the whole journey. It simply gives us enough light to keep walking.

So when we reach the places on our own maps marked, "Do not travel here," or "Dragons be here," perhaps the answer is not to turn around.

Perhaps the answer is to remember Who travels with us.

The valley may still be dark.

The road may still be unknown.

The dragons may still be waiting.

But God is already there.

I am not sure why, but this Bible story from Exodus 17 has always stayed with me since I was very young. I could not have told you which verse it came from—or even where it appeared in the Bible. I only remembered a story about a battle in which one side continued to win as long as someone kept his hands raised.

Some time ago, that memory found its way back into my "spaghetti brain" for no apparent reason, so I decided to look for the passage. I found it in Exodus 17:11–15, in the account of Israel's battle against the Amalekites.

Joshua led the Israelite army into battle while Moses stood on a hill overlooking the battlefield with the staff of God in his hand. Whenever Moses held up his hands, Israel prevailed. Whenever his hands began to fall, the Amalekites gained the advantage.

It sounded like a simple enough plan, but even when the spirit is willing, the body has its limits. As the battle continued, Moses grew tired and could no longer keep his hands raised. Moses' brothers, Aaron and Hur came to his aid. They placed a stone beneath him so he could sit, then stood on either side and supported his hands until sunset.

I think that may be one of the most important parts of the story.

God could have simply given Moses the supernatural strength to keep his hands raised all day. Instead, when Moses grew weak, God provided Aaron and Hur.

There is something comforting in that.

Sometimes God gives us the strength to stand on our own. Other times, He sends someone to stand beside us.

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 says, "Two are better than one… For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow." Galatians 6:2 gives us a similar instruction: "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." Aaron and Hur did exactly that. They could not fight Moses' battle for him, but they could help carry the weight when his own strength was gone.

Because Moses remained faithful to what God had instructed, Israel was given the victory. Afterward, Moses built an altar and named it "Yahweh-Nissi," meaning, "The Lord is my banner." In the song I used the words "Jehovah-Nissi" because "Yahweh," quite frankly, is a hard word to sing.

The idea of God as our banner is an important part of the story. In battle, a banner identified who an army belonged to and gave the soldiers something to rally around. Moses was declaring that Israel's victory did not belong to Joshua, the soldiers, or even to Moses himself.

The victory belonged to God.

Psalm 20:5 says, "In the name of our God we will set up our banners." The banner reminds us whose side we are on, but even more importantly, whose strength we are depending upon.

The song "Hands Held High" tells this story as one of a faithful servant depending on the strength of God's promise rather than the power of an army. The victory did not come simply through the skill or might of the soldiers. It came through obedience, perseverance, and trust in God.

Zechariah 4:6 expresses that same truth: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts."

That verse could almost serve as a summary of the entire story.

Joshua still had to fight.

The soldiers still had to enter the battle.

Moses still had to climb the hill and raise his hands.

Aaron and Hur still had to hold him up when he became weak.

Everyone had a part to play, but the victory ultimately belonged to God.

That distinction matters because there are times in our own lives when we begin to believe everything depends upon our strength. We think if we work harder, hold on longer, or somehow find enough strength within ourselves, we can win whatever battle is in front of us.

Exodus 17 reminds us that our strength has limits.

God's does not.

Isaiah 40:29 says, "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength." A few verses later comes the promise that those who wait upon the Lord "shall renew their strength."

The song is also a reminder of why we raise our hands in worship.

Throughout Scripture, lifted hands are associated with prayer, praise, surrender, and dependence on God. Psalm 63:4 says, "Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name." Psalm 134:2 says, "Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the Lord."

There is also something about raised hands that naturally expresses surrender. When our hands are open and lifted, we are no longer holding tightly to the things we think we can control.

We are acknowledging that we need God.

So raising our hands in worship can be much more than an outward display of faith. It can be a declaration that we remember God's promises, that we trust His strength, and that we recognize Him as the source of every victory.

Sometimes those hands are raised in celebration.

Sometimes they are raised in surrender.

Sometimes they are raised because we are asking God for help.

And sometimes, like Moses, our hands have been raised for so long that we simply cannot hold them up anymore.

I think one of the lessons God gives us in this story is that faith was never intended to be lived completely alone. There will be days when someone beside us is tired. Their faith may be struggling. Their strength may be gone. They may not need a sermon or an explanation. They may simply need someone to stand beside them and help hold their hands up for a while.

And someday, we may need someone to do the same for us.

When I began arranging the song, I felt that the lyrics, although powerful on their own, needed an added sense of strength and energy. I gave the recording a live-concert feel, allowing the music to build into the kind of bold, uplifting anthem I had imagined.

"Hands Held High" is a song of praise, remembrance, surrender, and dependence—a declaration that when our own strength begins to fail, God remains faithful.

He is still Jehovah-Nissi.

The Lord is still our banner.

The battle still belongs to Him.

And when our arms grow tired, He often sends an Aaron or a Hur to stand beside us and help us keep our hands held high.

For several decades, I have enjoyed taking well-known songs and rewriting them as praise and worship music. Our praise band has performed many of those songs over the years, but one of my favorites is a song we have never publicly performed.

The song was based on Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sound of Silence." I renamed my version "The Dream," and it began with the line, "Hello Jesus, my old friend, I've come to talk with You again."

The original song was, in part, a commentary on television, modern culture, and the growing inability of people to truly communicate with one another. My rewrite followed a similar theme, but focused on the countless devices and distractions that can interfere with our relationship with God. Scripture repeatedly reminds us how important it is to keep our attention centered on Him. Hebrews 12:2 tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, while Colossians 3:2 encourages us to "set your minds on things above, not on earthly things."

The difficulty with rewriting someone else's music is that the new song is considered a derivative work. Although people regularly post their own rewritten lyrics on YouTube, TikTok, and other platforms, legally recording, releasing, or commercially distributing a derivative song generally requires permission from the original copyright owner. Someone may choose to share a rewrite without receiving that permission, but the owner of the original work can object at any time, potentially creating an expensive legal problem.

My goal with "The Dream" was to build a larger message around the subject of distraction and connect it to the many biblical stories in which people lost their focus on God.

Peter became distracted by the wind and waves while walking toward Jesus on the water. As long as his attention remained on Jesus, he walked across the water, but when he saw the strength of the wind, fear took over and he began to sink (Matthew 14:28–31).

Martha became so consumed by her responsibilities that she lost sight of what mattered most. Jesus gently reminded her that while she was "worried and upset about many things," Mary had chosen what was better by sitting at His feet and listening to Him (Luke 10:38–42).

David's attention wandered toward Bathsheba, leading him down a path of temptation and sin that would have consequences far beyond that single moment (2 Samuel 11:1–27). His story is a powerful reminder of the warning in James 1:14–15 that temptation begins when we are drawn away by our own desires, which, when allowed to grow, can eventually lead to sin.

Scripture is filled with examples of what can happen when our eyes, hearts, and minds are drawn away from God. Proverbs 4:25–27 tells us to keep our eyes looking straight ahead and not turn aside, while Psalm 119:37 contains a simple prayer that fits this idea beautifully: "Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word."

"Draw Me Back to You" became my answer to the problem of recording someone else's song: I simply wrote an original one.

The song is a prayer asking God to draw us back to Him after the pressures, temptations, and distractions of life have pulled us away. That prayer is found throughout Scripture. James 4:8 says, "Come near to God and he will come near to you," and the prayer of Lamentations 5:21 says, "Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return."

It is also about recognizing the gifts God has placed within us and choosing to use those gifts to honor Him rather than ourselves. First Peter 4:10 reminds us that "each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace." Likewise, Romans 12:6 tells us that we have different gifts according to the grace God has given us.

At its heart, "Draw Me Back to You" is about returning our attention to the One who gave us our purpose in the first place. It is a reminder that when life becomes noisy, crowded, and distracting, we can always ask God to turn our hearts back toward Him.

As Psalm 86:11 says, "Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name."

"Faith Can Heal and Still Leave Scars" was not the title of the song I originally set out to write. Its first title was "He Holds You in His Arms Tonight," and it began as a song about grief, loss, and the promise of God's healing through grace and faith.

One of the unavoidable realities of growing older is that the people around us begin to pass away with increasing frequency. Parents, in-laws, more distant relatives, and friends—none of us is beyond the reach of death. It eventually comes for everyone.

That does not mean death is something we should look forward to, but for believers, I do not think it is something we need to fear. I'm not sure why, but for as long as I can remember, I have never been afraid of dying. The thought of death has never filled me with sorrow or dread. In my mind, it has always been what it is—another step along the journey.

Scripture speaks to that hope in a number of places. Psalm 23:4 says, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me." The promise is not that we will never enter that valley. The promise is that God will walk through it with us.

Paul expressed that same confidence in Philippians 1:21 when he wrote, "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." For a believer, death is not the end of the journey. It is the point where this part of the journey gives way to the next.

When the first ideas for this song began to form, I imagined a simple ballad in the spirit of Vince Gill's "Go Rest High on That Mountain." I wanted only two verses and a straightforward chorus, with a gentle arrangement and a slight emotional lift in the chorus.

As often happens when I begin writing, however, the song took on a life of its own and moved in a direction I had not planned.

I try to write songs that tell stories and create pictures in the listener's mind. I want people to be able to close their eyes and see the room, imagine the place, feel the warmth of the sun, or sense the soft touch of a passing breeze. As those pictures begin to develop, the story in my mind often shifts away from the idea I started with.

And that's all right.

The song goes where God takes it.

While I was working through the lyrics, the phrase "faith can heal and still leave scars" simply appeared at the end of the second verse. I didn't give it much thought at first. It was just another line on the page.

After writing the final chorus, I picked up my guitar and began working through the melody. When I reached the end of the second verse and sang the words, "faith can heal and still leave scars," I stopped completely.

I remember staring at the line and reading it over and over, partly because I didn't even remember writing it.

The meaning of those words—or at least what they meant to me—changed the entire song.

Faith and time can help heal our brokenness, whether the wounds are physical, emotional, or spiritual. Psalm 147:3 says, "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." That verse does not pretend the wound was never there. God sees the wound, touches it, binds it, and begins the work of healing.

But healing does not always mean that every sign of the hurt disappears.

Physical scars may be easy for others to see, while emotional scars often remain hidden. Yet even the scars no one else can see are fully visible to God.

And perhaps the greatest example of healing and scars can be found in Jesus Himself.

After the resurrection, Jesus appeared to His disciples alive and victorious over death. Yet the scars remained. When Thomas struggled to believe, Jesus said to him in John 20:27, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands."

That has always struck me as powerful.

Jesus had been resurrected.

Death had been defeated.

The wounds were healed.

But the scars were still there.

His scars were not evidence that the resurrection had somehow been incomplete. They were evidence of what He had endured and what had been overcome.

Maybe our scars can mean something similar.

They do not necessarily mean we are still wounded. They may simply show that we once were.

They tell a story.

A scar can say, "Something happened here."

It can also say, "But it did not destroy me."

Paul gives us another image in 2 Corinthians 4:8–9: "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed."

That does not sound like a life untouched by pain.

It sounds like a life that has been through something and discovered that God was still there.

I believe the line "faith can heal and still leave scars" was God's way of reminding me that scars are not proof that healing has failed. They are reminders of the journey we have survived, the pain we have carried, and the grace that sustained us along the way.

Some scars remind us of people we have lost.

Some remind us of mistakes we have made.

Some come from battles no one else ever knew we were fighting.

Some may fade with time, while others remain with us for the rest of our lives.

But God knows every one of them.

And He can use even those scars.

Romans 8:28 reminds us that "all things work together for good to them that love God." It does not say that all things are good. Loss is not good. Pain is not good. Grief does not suddenly become pleasant because we have faith. But God can take even the painful pieces of our lives and work through them in ways we may not understand at the time.

There is also something important about remembering that faith does not require us to stop grieving.

Grief and faith are not opposites.

We can believe in heaven and still miss someone.

We can trust God and still hurt.

We can know that someone we love is in His arms and still wish they were in ours.

Revelation 21:4 gives us the promise toward which all of that grief is moving: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain."

That is the final healing.

Until then, we carry memories. We carry loss. And sometimes we carry scars.

But we do not carry them alone.

So what began as a song about death and grief eventually became, at least for me, a song about something larger.

It became a song about surviving.

About healing.

About remembering.

About believing that pain does not have the final word.

The scars may remain, but they are not proof that God abandoned us.

Sometimes they are evidence that He carried us through.

And in the end, it is faith that brings us home.

Some of the songs I write come from a desire to praise God. Some are written to revisit a warmer, slower, kinder time. And some are written for purely selfish reasons.

"Dependable" falls into that last category.

The song was born on a hot summer day at the farm while I was trimming trees in the orchard. I had my old Ford F-350—my rolling toolbox—parked beneath a tree, and I was standing in the bed cutting limbs I couldn't reach from the ground.

When I finished, I climbed into the cab, turned the key, and…nothing.

Not a click. Not a light. Not a single sign of life. The truck was completely dead, as though someone had removed both batteries.

Yes, it has two.

I popped the hood but couldn't find anything wrong. I checked the fuse box and still found nothing. So, I did what any self-respecting old man would do: I stomped off and pouted.

The mowing still needed to be done, so I climbed onto the mower and took off. I didn't stop thinking about that stupid truck; I just redirected my brainpower toward something else.

I love my old farm truck. It's old, beat-up, a lot like me, and has nearly 300,000 miles on it, but we've been through a lot together. Over the past few years, though, it has started giving me a few problems. As I mowed, my mind began to wander—which is what a person does while mowing. You ponder life's great mysteries.

That day, I pondered whether it might be time for a new truck.

Then I had another thought: Maybe I could write a song about a truck and convince a manufacturer to give me one.

Like I said, this song was written for selfish reasons.

There are plenty of songs about Fords, Chevys, and Dodges, but I couldn't remember ever hearing one about a GMC. For the record, my last three new daily-driver trucks have all been GMCs. I've tried the others, but a GMC just seems to fit my rear end better.

Anyway, back to the story.

As I mowed, my brain shifted into lyric mode. By the time I finished, four hours later, the song was pretty much complete—a song about how dependable my GMC truck is.

Of course, me being me, I couldn't leave it at that.

I had to wrap the truck story around something deeper: family, loyalty, and how important it is to have people in your life you can depend on.

Scripture has a lot to say about that kind of faithfulness. Proverbs 17:17 says, "A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." To me, that is a pretty good definition of dependable. The people who matter most are not simply the ones who are around when everything is running smoothly. They are the ones who are still standing beside you when something breaks down.

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 expresses much the same thought: "Two are better than one… For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow." Life is easier when we have someone willing to help carry the load, pick us up when we fall, or simply stand beside us until we can get moving again.

Galatians 6:2 tells us, "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ." Dependability, then, is more than simply being trustworthy. It means being willing to carry some weight for somebody else.

I think that is one of the greatest gifts we can give the people we love: the confidence that when life breaks down, they do not have to wonder whether we will still be there.

There is also a lesson here about the difference between the things we depend on and the One we can truly depend on.

Trucks break.

Equipment wears out.

Plans fail.

People, despite our best intentions, sometimes disappoint one another.

But Scripture repeatedly reminds us that God's faithfulness is different.

Deuteronomy 7:9 describes Him as "the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy." Lamentations 3:22–23 tells us that His compassions never fail and then gives us those familiar words: "Great is thy faithfulness."

Hebrews 13:5 gives us perhaps the greatest promise of dependability we could ever receive: "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."

That does not mean every road will be smooth or that everything in our lives will start when we turn the key. It means that when something does fail, God does not.

Maybe that is why dependability means so much to us in the first place. Somewhere deep inside, we all want something—or someone—we can trust. Someone who shows up. Someone who keeps their word. Someone who stays when life becomes inconvenient.

And perhaps, in our own imperfect way, that is the kind of person God calls us to become for one another.

So somewhere in the middle of mowing that orchard, what started as a scheme to get myself a free truck became a song about something much more important.

Be faithful.

Keep your word.

Carry somebody else's burden when they need help.

Be the person who can be counted on when everything else quits working.

And remember that behind every dependable person, every faithful friend, and every family member who refuses to walk away stands the greatest example of faithfulness we will ever know—a God who promises never to leave us or forsake us.

So, if you happen to know someone at General Motors who is looking to give away a one-ton, four-door GMC truck, please send them my way.

I believe God answers prayer.

P.S. When I finished mowing, I climbed back into my old Ford, turned the key, and it started right up.

I may have said something naughty.

Apparently, the truck just needed some time alone to think about what it had done.

I have come to realize that the underlying theme running through most of my songs is the journey home.

The struggles, the heartache, the joy, the love, and the laughter are all part of our lives. Every experience becomes a mile traveled, and every memory tells another piece of the story of our own individual journey.

As I have mentioned before, most of my songs are written as stories. I try to create an image clear enough that you can actually see it in your mind's eye. My hope is that each story might carry you back to a cherished memory or, at the very least, leave you with the feeling that you have walked that road before.

My mind naturally seems to return to stories about journeys, winding roads, hard seasons, and finding our way home. At the same time, keeping track of all the songs, lyrics, recordings, and stories behind them was becoming a little cumbersome. So, I created LongRoadHomeWorship.com.

The website gives me a place to share not only the songs, but also the lyrics and the stories behind them. It also provides links to the streaming services where the complete, mastered versions of the songs can be heard.

After building a website, I figured I probably ought to write a song about the long road home.

So I did.

The idea behind the song was really no more complicated than that. It is the story of learning to appreciate the long, rough road because every difficult step carries us a little closer to home.

That theme can be found throughout Scripture.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 7:13–14 that the gate is narrow and the road is difficult that leads to life. The easiest road is not always the right one, and the right road is rarely promised to be smooth.

Psalm 23:4 reminds us that even when we walk through the darkest valley, we do not walk alone, because God is with us.

Proverbs 3:5–6 tells us to trust in the Lord rather than relying only on our own understanding. When we acknowledge Him, He will make our path straight.

Hebrews 12:1 encourages us to run with endurance the race set before us, laying aside the burdens that slow us down.

And in John 14:6, Jesus tells us plainly, "I am the way, the truth, and the life."

The road may be steep. It may be rocky, narrow, and difficult to follow. There may be places where we stumble, lose our direction, or wonder how much farther we have to go.

But when Jesus is the road we are traveling, every step—no matter how hard—brings us closer to home.

This song came from several things falling into place at just the right time.

One of my nephews was getting married, and I told him that if he would tell me the story of how they met, describe their first date, and share a few of the things about her that completely knocked his socks off, I would try to write a song for their first dance.

I worked through several versions, but none of them felt quite right. Instead of becoming a heartfelt message about love, commitment, and the joining of two hearts, they kept drifting into something more comical. That may work for some songs, but it was not what I wanted for this one.

I wanted to write something that reflected the deeper meaning of marriage—the moment when two separate lives are joined together and begin traveling as one.

Scripture describes that bond in Genesis 2:24: "A man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh." Marriage is more than standing together for a ceremony or exchanging promises for a single day. It is the joining of two stories, two families, two futures, and two hearts.

Jesus repeated that truth in Matthew 19:6 when He said, "They are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

While I was struggling with the song, I happened to mention the project to a Realtor friend of mine. She said, "You know, I have always thought 'Not Just a Ring to Me' would make a good song title."

And bam—there it was.

Sometimes that is all it takes. You hear a word or a phrase, catch a certain note, or even smell something familiar in the air, and suddenly a song is born.

As soon as I had the chance to sit down and write again, the song nearly wrote itself.

The title gave me the message I had been searching for. A wedding ring is beautiful, but it is only the outward symbol of something much greater. It represents the promises spoken, the lives being joined, and the commitment to remain faithful through every season ahead.

Ecclesiastes 4:9–10 says, "Two are better than one," because when one falls, the other is there to help them up. A few verses later, it reminds us that "a cord of three strands is not quickly broken." For a Christian marriage, that third strand is God, woven into the relationship and holding the couple together when life becomes difficult.

First Corinthians 13 tells us that love is patient and kind, that it protects, trusts, hopes, and perseveres. That is the kind of love I wanted this song to describe—not simply the excitement of a wedding day, but the enduring love required to build a life together.

"Not Just a Ring to Me" has become one of my favorite songs for several reasons. It was written for a very special couple. It tells the story of two lives and two hearts being bound together. And I hope it draws listeners into the story, allowing them to remember the promises, people, and special moments that have shaped their own lives.

"That Old Door Frame" is one of those songs that seemed to come from nowhere. It belongs to what I think of as my nostalgic collection—songs that reach back into the past and bring old memories into the present.

I was working at the family farm, which is a weekly event for me, when I walked into a closet and noticed the height markings on an old door frame. Those marks represent nearly seventy years of children and grandchildren growing up around the farm.

I already knew they were there. I had seen them countless times. But on that particular day, they hit me differently.

My job takes me into people's homes every day, and it is amazing how much you can learn about a family simply by looking around. Some homes are neat and tidy, while others are well lived in. You can usually tell whether there are children, pets, hobbies, or a life filled with activity and adventure.

One thing I see fairly often is a row of pencil marks on a door frame, recording the growth of a family through the years. Each little line may seem ordinary, but together they tell a story—birthdays, bare feet, school years, growth spurts, and children slowly becoming adults.

Whenever I see those markings, I wonder what happens when the family moves. Do they take a photograph? Do they tape a piece of paper beside the frame and trace the lines so they can carry that small piece of their history with them?

I hope they do.

There is something sad about the thought of leaving those memories behind for someone else to paint over.

Years ago, my dad used a roll of adding-machine paper to transfer the markings from the door frame at the farm. I still have that paper hanging in my shop. As my granddaughter grew, I added her measurements to it as well. She was not always thrilled about standing still while I marked her height, but it was important to me.

I wanted her place in the family story to be recorded beside all the others.

Psalm 127:3 says, "Children are a heritage from the Lord." Those little marks on the wall are a simple reminder of that heritage. They show how quickly children grow and how precious the years are while we have them close.

Psalm 90:12 asks God to "teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." A door frame covered in measurements is, in its own way, a record of numbered days. It reminds us that time is always moving, whether we are paying attention or not.

Deuteronomy 6:6–7 tells us to impress God's words upon our children and speak of them throughout the ordinary moments of life—at home, along the road, at bedtime, and when the day begins. Faith and family are often built in those ordinary moments, not only in the great milestones.

On that particular day, those old marks stirred something in me. Memories began flooding back, and I sat down to jot a few thoughts on paper. Before long, those thoughts began turning into lyrics.

I hope "That Old Door Frame" causes some listeners to remember a time when their own family measured the passing years with pencil marks on a wall. Others may never have experienced that particular tradition, but perhaps the song will bring back some other forgotten memory—a familiar room, a grandparent's voice, children running through the house, or a place that still feels like home.

The marks may only be lines on an old piece of wood, but to the people who made them, they are a record of life, family, and time passing far too quickly.

My dad grew up in that old farm house and as a tribute, the album cover art for the song shows marks on the door frame for my sisters and I and a mark showing the date of my dad's passing, showing just one more moment in the passage of time.

Honestly, I don't remember exactly what the catalyst was for this song. I keep a list on my phone filled with thoughts, phrases I hear that catch my ear, things I see, or little ideas that seem like they might turn into something someday. "The Mess I Made" was sitting on that list, so I'm sure I heard the phrase somewhere along the way and thought, There's something in that.

Every once in a while, I'll scroll through that list and one of those old ideas suddenly jumps out at me saying, "Pick me. Pick me."

I'm never really sure why a thought that meant very little to me six months earlier suddenly feels important, but I like to think that sometimes it's God saying, You're ready to tackle this one now.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 reminds us that, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." Maybe ideas have seasons too. Maybe sometimes God plants a thought long before we are ready to understand what He intends to do with it.

When I began thinking about "The Mess I Made," the idea that kept fluttering through my mind was God's willingness to step down into whatever mess we have made and meet us right where we are.

That seems to be one of the great misunderstandings people sometimes have about Christianity. We convince ourselves that we need to get cleaned up before coming to God. We think we need to climb out of the hole, wash off the mud, straighten ourselves out, and somehow become worthy before approaching Him.

But that isn't the Gospel.

Jesus said, "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick" (Luke 5:31). He didn't come looking for people who had everything figured out. He came looking for people who knew they needed saving.

We don't rise up out of the muck so we can meet Him.

He comes down into it to meet us.

Romans 5:8 says it about as clearly as Scripture possibly can: "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Not after we cleaned ourselves up.

Not after we conquered every addiction, temptation, fear, failure, or bad decision.

Not after we became deserving.

While we were yet sinners.

That thought became the heart of the song.

The truth is, every one of us has made a mess of something. Sometimes those messes are small and temporary. Other times they follow us for years. We make wrong choices. We hurt people. We ignore God. We wander down roads we knew we shouldn't travel. Sometimes pride gets us there. Sometimes anger. Sometimes fear. Sometimes temptation. Sometimes we simply convince ourselves that we know better.

Romans 3:23 tells us, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."

Every one of us.

Some people may hide their mess better than others, but none of us stands before God without the need for grace.

That is what makes the ministry of Jesus so powerful to me. When you look at the people Jesus spent time with, He continually moved toward the people everyone else wanted to avoid. He touched lepers. He ate with tax collectors. He spoke with sinners. He healed the sick. He defended the condemned. He sought out the forgotten, the hurting, the rejected, and the lost.

He went where they were.

Jesus even described His own mission this way: "For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost" (Luke 19:10).

The woman at the well in John 4 is one of my favorite examples of this.

She came to the well carrying far more than a water jar. She carried a complicated past, broken relationships, and a lifetime of judgment from the people around her. Jesus knew every bit of it.

Yet He still sat beside the well and spoke with her.

He didn't begin by humiliating her.

He didn't tell her to go fix her life and come back later.

He met her where she was.

Jesus told her about "living water," saying, "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst" (John 4:14).

He knew her story, He knew her failures, and still He offered her something better.

Grace.

The same thing happened when the religious leaders brought a woman caught in adultery before Jesus. They were ready to condemn her, but Jesus responded with mercy. After her accusers walked away, He told her, "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more" (John 8:11).

Grace did not pretend the sin didn't matter, or that it never happened. Grace simply refused to let the sin have the final word. That is an important distinction.

God meeting us in our mess does not mean He wants us to stay there. Jesus meets us where we are, but He loves us too much to leave us there.

Psalm 40 paints a beautiful picture of that truth:

"He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock" (Psalm 40:2).

I love that image because it fits the song so well.

Sometimes the hole we find ourselves in is a hole someone else dug. But sometimes, if we're honest, we're standing at the bottom of a hole holding the shovel. We dug it ourselves. And even there, God's grace can reach us.

One line in the chorus says:

"Your grace met me there with nail-scarred hands."

For me, that line may say more about the song than anything else.

Those nail-scarred hands represent the price Jesus was willing to pay to reach us. They remind us that forgiveness is not some casual gesture from God. Our redemption came through the cross.

Isaiah wrote centuries before the crucifixion that, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5).

And 1 Peter 2:24 says that Jesus "bare our sins in his own body on the tree."

Those scars are evidence of just how far God was willing to go to rescue us.

After His resurrection, Jesus still bore those wounds. When Thomas struggled to believe, Jesus told him, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands" (John 20:27).

The scars remained.

So when I picture Christ reaching down into the mess I created, I don't picture pristine, untouched hands.

I picture nail-scarred hands.

Hands that understand pain.

Hands that carried the weight of sin.

Hands that were stretched out on a cross.

Hands strong enough to pull me out of whatever hole I managed to dig for myself.

The beautiful thing about grace is that there is no pit too deep for those hands to reach.

We may feel unworthy.

We may feel ashamed.

We may think we have wandered too far.

We may look at the wreckage around us and wonder how God could possibly want anything to do with us.

But the story of Scripture tells us otherwise.

The prodigal son wasted his inheritance, ruined his reputation, and eventually found himself feeding pigs and longing to eat their food. When he finally decided to return home, he expected to be treated like a servant.

Instead, "when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran" to him (Luke 15:20).

The father ran toward the mess. That's the message in the second verse saying "Like a Father running toward me saying 'Child, welcome home.'"

That is the picture I wanted this song to capture.

"The Mess I Made" isn't really a song about how badly we can ruin things.

It's a song about how far grace is willing to go to find us.

It is about a Savior who does not stand safely on the edge of the pit shouting instructions about how we might climb out.

He comes down. He reaches into the mud. He finds us in the shame, the fear, the regret, the consequences, and the broken pieces.

And with nail-scarred hands, He offers to pull us back into the light.

Ephesians 2:8 reminds us, "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God."

That may ultimately be the message behind the song.

I made the mess.

I dug the hole.

I wandered away.

But grace came looking for me.

And when I finally looked up, Jesus was already there.

This song was not planned.

The idea didn't come from my list of song ideas, and when I started writing it, I had no intention of it becoming a praise and worship piece. There wasn't a sermon I was trying to build around, a particular Scripture I was studying, or some deep theological thought running through my head.

This song came from a mess in my kitchen.

Well, actually, my wife's kitchen.

It was the weekend before Valentine's Day 2026. My wife, daughter, granddaughter, and mother-in-law were all at our house making cookies. I was outside doing something that I'm sure was terribly important, and when I came back into the house, it sounded like a middle school lunchroom.

Talking.

Laughing.

Banging pans.

Cabinet doors opening and closing.

Everybody trying to talk at the same time.

What a racket.

I stepped into the kitchen and found four generations of women having the time of their lives while simultaneously trying to stay out of each other's way and keep from making too big of a mess.

I stood there and watched them for a while.

And something about that scene caught me.

Psalm 127:3 says, "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord."

I think we sometimes read verses like that and immediately think about young children, but an inheritance doesn't stop being an inheritance when it grows up.

There in that kitchen was an inheritance four generations deep.

A mother.

A daughter.

A granddaughter.

A great-granddaughter.

Four lives connected across the years, standing around the same countertops, sharing the same room, laughing together and doing something families have probably done for thousands of years.

There was nothing extraordinary about what they were doing.

And maybe that was what made it extraordinary.

I went to my office, grabbed my laptop, came back into the kitchen and sat down at the table to write.

I started thinking about how often a family really gets an opportunity like this. How often do four generations get to stand together in one kitchen and do something that mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers have done for generations before them?

There was something almost timeless about it.

The appliances were modern. The recipe probably came from a cookbook, a card, or maybe even a phone. The pans were newer and the ingredients came from a grocery store.

But the scene itself could have happened fifty years ago.

Or a hundred.

A mother teaching a daughter.

A grandmother remembering how she used to do it.

A child sneaking a little dough when she thinks nobody is watching.

Someone insisting that something is being done wrong.

Someone else insisting, "That's how we've always done it."

And everybody laughing about it without hurt feelings.

It made me think about how much of family is passed from one generation to another without ever being formally taught.

Deuteronomy 6 speaks about teaching God's ways to our children in the ordinary rhythms of life: "when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way" (Deuteronomy 6:7).

I love that picture because it reminds us that some of life's most important lessons aren't learned in classrooms or during carefully planned conversations.

They happen around kitchen tables.

They happen while working side by side.

They happen while recipes are being passed down, stories are being repeated, and somebody says, "Your grandmother used to do that exact same thing."

Faith can be passed that way too.

Paul reminded Timothy of "the unfeigned faith" that first lived in his grandmother Lois and then in his mother Eunice before he saw that same faith in Timothy (2 Timothy 1:5).

Three generations specifically named in Scripture, connected by faith.

There is something powerful about that.

We tend to think of inheritance as land, money, houses, jewelry, or possessions. But some of the greatest things we pass to those who come behind us will never appear in a will.

Faith.

Character.

Traditions.

Stories.

Laughter.

Recipes.

Memories.

The knowledge that they belonged somewhere and that somebody loved them.

Proverbs 17:6 says, "Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers."

There is a bond God built into family that stretches both directions.

The younger generation looks back and discovers where they came from.

The older generation looks forward and catches a glimpse of what will remain after they are gone.

And for a little while, if we are blessed, all those generations overlap.

That is what I was watching in the kitchen that afternoon.

Four generations whose lives overlapped in that one small place at that one particular moment in time.

I sat there and just let my fingers have at it.

I wasn't really thinking about what I was typing. I didn't have a design for the song or a destination for the storyline. I simply watched what was happening and let what I was feeling show up on the page one word at a time.

I knew I had to get it down.

Maybe that's because somewhere in the back of my mind I understood something we don't like to think about very often:

Moments like that don't last forever.

James 4:14 describes our life as "a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."

That can sound like a sad verse, but I don't think it has to be.

Sometimes knowing something won't last is exactly what teaches us to treasure it while it's here.

Children grow up.

Parents grow older.

Grandparents leave us.

Houses are sold.

Kitchens change.

Holiday traditions become memories.

One day somebody picks up an old recipe card and recognizes the handwriting of someone they would give almost anything to sit beside one more time.

Maybe that is why Scripture repeatedly tells us to remember.

Psalm 145:4 says, "One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts."

Family is one of the places where remembering happens.

We tell the stories again.

We repeat the old sayings.

We make the same food.

We laugh about things that happened twenty or thirty years ago.

And, hopefully, somewhere in all of that, we also tell the next generation about the God who carried the family through those years.

We tell them about prayers that were answered.

We tell them about hard seasons God brought us through.

We tell them about His faithfulness.

We remind them that the same God who walked with Grandma and Grandpa will walk with them.

Psalm 103:17 says that "the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children."

That's a beautiful picture of God's faithfulness stretching across generations.

As I sat watching those four women make cookies, I began to realize that what looked like an ordinary Saturday afternoon was actually something much bigger.

It was a blessing.

There is something special about being able to look around a room and see where you've come from and where you're going at the same time.

The older generation carries the stories.

The middle generations carry the responsibility.

The youngest generation carries possibilities none of us will live long enough to fully see.

And for one afternoon, all of them were standing in the same kitchen.

Within about an hour, the song was mostly finished. It still needed to be arranged and revised, and of course it needed a melody, but the heart of it was already there.

Within a few days, the final version of "Four Generations" was born.

Somewhere along the way, what started as a song about four women making cookies became something more to me.

It became a song about recognizing God's blessings while they are still standing in front of us.

We're often looking for God in the miraculous, and certainly He is there.

But He is also in the ordinary.

He is in a crowded kitchen.

He is in the laughter of people we love.

He is in Grandma showing somebody how much flour to use.

He is in a granddaughter making memories she may not fully appreciate for another twenty years.

He is in traditions handed from one set of hands to another.

James 1:17 tells us, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above."

Sometimes those gifts don't arrive wrapped in paper.

Sometimes they're wearing aprons and making cookies.

I don't know whether my granddaughter will remember every detail of that afternoon. She probably won't.

She may not remember what kind of cookies they made.

She may not remember who spilled something or who got in somebody else's way.

She may not remember what everybody was laughing about.

But I hope somewhere inside her, the memory remains.

I hope one day, many years from now, she is standing in her own kitchen with children and grandchildren running around making entirely too much noise and entirely too much mess.

And maybe for just a moment she'll remember another kitchen.

Another afternoon.

Her mother.

Her grandmother.

Her great-grandmother.

Four generations standing together.

And perhaps she'll realize what I was fortunate enough to realize while it was still happening:

The blessing wasn't really the cookies.

The blessing was who was standing in the kitchen.

"Adilynn's Song" came from a completely different place than most of my songs.

A friend had just gotten married and he and his wife were expecting their first child—a little girl. To say he was excited would be an understatement. He immediately went to work remodeling their home, including turning an ordinary bedroom into a nursery for their new daughter.

Every evening after work, he would go home and work tirelessly on the house. The fun part was that he filmed much of the process and posted the videos online, so I got to watch the transformation as it happened.

But the house wasn't the only thing being transformed.

I was also watching a carefree young man becoming a Dad.

Suddenly, everything he was doing had a purpose. Every wall he painted, every piece of furniture he moved, and every detail he carefully planned was being done for someone he hadn't even met yet.

There is something special about the love a mother and father have for their child before that child ever takes her first breath.

Psalm 139:13–14 reminds us that God knows and forms us even before we are born: "For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made."

This little girl was already loved.

Loved by a mother who carried her.

Loved by a father preparing a place for her.

And most importantly, loved by the God who created her.

One of the videos showed the transformation of a common bedroom into a beautiful nursery. When I watched it, what struck me wasn't really the room itself. It was the love behind it. That nursery was almost dripping with the love of a father for a daughter he had not yet held in his arms. The album cover art for this song is actually a picture of this nursery.

Jesus once said that even earthly parents know how to give good gifts to their children (Matthew 7:11). Watching that room come together reminded me that one of the ways we begin to understand the love of God is through the love found in a family.

Parents naturally want to protect their children, provide for them, comfort them when they hurt, and somehow make the road ahead of them a little easier.

Proverbs 22:6 tells parents to "Train up a child in the way he should go." That responsibility begins long before a child understands what Mom and Dad are doing. It begins with preparing a home filled with love, patience, security, and faith.

As I watched the video, I thought, I need to write a lullaby for this little girl.

Not simply a song for a new baby, but something her mom and dad could keep—something that might always remind them of this brief, magical season when they were waiting for her to arrive and imagining who she would someday become.

Children grow quickly. Nurseries eventually become bedrooms. Cribs disappear, toys change, and little girls grow up.

But the love that began before they ever held her doesn't disappear.

Psalm 127:3 says, "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord."

That is really what "Adilynn's Song" became to me—a simple celebration of that gift.

A little girl who had not yet entered the world, already surrounded by love.

A mother waiting to hold her.

A father preparing a place for her.

And a God who knew her long before any of us knew her name.

This song wasn't on my radar at all. Our church's Mother's Day Out program had just held a fundraiser that included the kids singing songs, and although I didn't see the program, when I heard about it I thought, Why not write one for them?

So I did.

I wanted something upbeat and fun, with a chorus that would stick in their heads after hearing it only a few times. More importantly, I wanted it to be simple enough for little voices to sing while teaching them something important about Jesus.

What came out of that was "And Will Always Be."

The chorus really tells the whole story:

Jesus is my friend and will always be,

Jesus is my teacher and will always be,

Jesus is my Savior and will always be,

Jesus is beside me and will always be.

Those are simple words, but there is a lot of truth behind them. Jesus calls us His friends in John 15:15. He is our teacher—throughout the Gospels His followers simply called Him "Master" or "Teacher." Most importantly, He is our Savior: "For unto you is born this day… a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11).

And the last line may be the most comforting for a child: "Jesus is beside me and will always be." Jesus promised, "I am with you alway" (Matthew 28:20), and Hebrews 13:5 reminds us that He will never leave us nor forsake us.

The verses take those truths into places children understand—the morning when they wake up, learning at school, being afraid, and saying their prayers. I wanted them to understand that Jesus isn't just someone they hear about at church. He goes with them into their everyday lives.

The song ended up being fast, happy, and a little silly in just the right places. The "Ooo, Ooo, Ooo" sections even lend themselves perfectly to kazoos—and anything involving a room full of kids and kazoos has to be good.

But underneath all the fun is one simple message I hope they remember long after they forget the song:

Jesus loves them. Jesus will guide them. Jesus will save them. And wherever life takes them, He will always be there.

This is another song written for some very special babies—and this time, there are two of them. Twin boys.

I'll say right up front that my prayers are probably as much for their mom as they are for the boys. Their dad is my nephew, and I remember some of what he put his own parents through growing up. So in a way, I suppose two sons are a little bit of God's sense of humor coming full circle for him.

It should be a fun ride.

When the boys were born, I immediately felt the urge to write something for them. There are a lot of miles between us, and because of that, I know I won't be a big part of their everyday lives. I won't be there for every birthday, ballgame, scraped knee, or first day of school, but that doesn't mean that my heart isn't with them.

But I wanted them to have something that might one day remind them that distance has very little to do with love.

There are people scattered throughout our lives who may not be standing beside us every day, but who still pray for us, think about us, and love us from afar.

Psalm 127:3 tells us, "Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord." These two little boys are not only a blessing to their mom and dad, but to an entire family that welcomed them into the world with love.

And long before any of us knew what their personalities would be, what paths they would choose, or who they would someday become, God already knew them. Jeremiah 1:5 says, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee."

That thought became especially meaningful as I wrote the song.

Their mom and dad will do everything they can to protect them, guide them, and love them. The rest of us will cheer them on and pray for them, even if some of us have to do it from many miles away.

But ultimately, there is One who will be with them every step of the journey. Psalm 121:8 says, "The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore."

That is really what I wanted "Close Your Sleepy Eyes" to be—a simple lullaby from someone they may never know especially well, reminding two little boys that from the very beginning, their lives were surrounded by love.

Their mom and dad love them.

Their family loves them.

And wherever life takes them, God will be walking there with them also.

"David's Song" is one of those songs I simply had to write.

I have talked several times at church about Psalm 23, what it means to me, and the importance it has had throughout my life. There are passages of Scripture we read and appreciate, and then there are those few that somehow become part of us. For me, Psalm 23 is one of those passages.

Psalm 23:1–6 (KJV)

1 The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

5 Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

I'm not sure why this passage caught my attention so strongly when I was a little boy. If I had to guess, it was probably verse four:

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil."

I certainly didn't understand the depth of those words then. I just thought "the valley of the shadow of death" sounded pretty cool. To a young boy, it sounded mysterious and dangerous—almost like something out of an adventure story.

But somewhere along the way, those words stayed with me.

I can remember thinking about them in junior high, high school, and college, particularly on days when life wasn't going especially well. As I grew older, the verse slowly changed for me. What had once sounded dramatic became comforting. The valley was no longer some imaginary place. I began to understand that we all walk through valleys—fear, disappointment, uncertainty, loss, loneliness, and seasons when we simply don't know what comes next.

And I began to understand that David never said we wouldn't have to walk through them.

He said we wouldn't have to walk through them alone.

"For thou art with me."

That may be the most important part of the entire Psalm.

God doesn't always remove the valley, but He promises His presence while we walk through it. Isaiah 43:2 carries that same promise: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee."

As the years passed, Psalm 23 became less of a favorite Bible passage and more of a foundation beneath my faith. From a boy fascinated by the words to a man relying on their promise.

"The Lord is my shepherd" reminds me who leads.

"He restoreth my soul" reminds me where to turn when I am worn down.

"I will fear no evil" reminds me that fear does not have to control me.

"Thou art with me" reminds me that I am never truly walking alone.

And "I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever" reminds me where this journey ultimately leads.

Jesus later used that same image when He said, "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep" (John 10:11). David wrote about the Shepherd centuries before Christ, but in Jesus we see just how far that Shepherd was willing to go for His sheep.

When I turned fifty, I even had part of that message tattooed on my arm along with the words "Return to Sender." It was my way of carrying outwardly something I had already carried inside for most of my life—a reminder of who I belong to and where I am ultimately headed.

That is where "David's Song" came from.

It isn't simply a song based on Psalm 23. It is a song about a passage that has grown up with me.

As a boy, I loved the sound of the words.

As a young man, I began turning to them when life became difficult.

And as I have grown older, I have come to understand their promise.

There will be valleys.

There will be shadows.

There will be days when the path ahead is difficult to see.

But the Shepherd is still leading.

His goodness and mercy are still following.

And whatever valley may be ahead, I can walk through it knowing:

"Thou art with me."

"He Was Thinking of Me" was a purposefully written song.

Easter was approaching, and I found myself wanting to hear something different from the songs our band usually performed during that season. I didn't simply want to write another song describing the crucifixion. I wanted to think about the why behind it.

Why the cross?

Why the suffering?

Why would Jesus willingly endure the humiliation, the beating, the nails, and finally death?

And somewhere in those thoughts came a very personal question:

Was He thinking about me when He was enduring the pain?

I believe He was.

Not just me, of course, but all of us.

Jesus knew exactly why He had come. The cross was not an unexpected ending to His ministry or something that suddenly went terribly wrong. Long before Bethlehem and Calvary, Scripture pointed toward a Savior who would suffer for our sins.

Isaiah wrote, "He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5). Jesus Himself said that He came "to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).

The Father knew what was coming.

The Son knew what was coming.

They knew why it had to happen.

And still, Jesus went to the cross.

There is a story I heard years ago that changed the way I looked at that sacrifice.

Imagine walking into an enormous room filled with filing cabinets. They stretch from wall to wall, row after row, farther than you can see.

You open one drawer and discover that every card inside contains something from your life.

Every cruel thought.

Every judgment you made about someone else.

Every unkind word.

Every lie.

Every time someone needed your help and you turned away.

Every conversation in which you tore someone down.

Every selfish decision.

Every time you knew what was right and chose something else.

Cabinet after cabinet contains the things you would desperately hope no one else would ever see.

Romans 3:23 tells us why the room exists: "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."

Even worse, every card is written in your own handwriting. And at the bottom is your signature.

There is no arguing that somebody else put it there.

You did it.

Then somewhere among those thousands of drawers, you find the record of the things you did right—the people you helped, the kindness you showed, the times you shared your faith or tried to live the way God wanted you to live.

Compared to everything else, that record seems painfully small.

And then Jesus walks into the room.

Your first thought isn't relief.

It's shame.

Please, anybody but Him.

You don't want Jesus opening those drawers. You don't want Him reading what you said, seeing what you thought, or knowing how many times you failed.

But He already knows.

Hebrews 4:13 tells us that nothing is hidden from God. Everything is open before Him.

Jesus walks to the cabinets containing your failures and begins pulling out the cards one by one.

But He doesn't condemn you.

Instead, He signs His name across yours. Not in black ink.

In red.

One card after another.

One failure after another.

One sin after another.

Covered by His blood.

That picture reminds me of Colossians 2:14, which says that Christ blotted out the record that stood against us and "took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross."

That is the Gospel.

The debt was ours.

The payment was His.

"For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

The terrible price we should have been trying to figure out how to pay has already been paid.

That doesn't mean our sin never mattered.

It means it mattered so much that Jesus went to the cross because of it.

And it doesn't mean forgiveness is something we earned by having enough good cards in the good drawer. Ephesians 2:8–9 reminds us that salvation is by grace through faith—"not of works."

It is a gift.

But a gift still has to be received.

Jesus stands before us with nail-scarred hands offering something we could never purchase for ourselves.

Forgiveness.

Grace.

Redemption.

A new beginning.

John 3:16 says it in the words many of us have known since childhood: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son."

I had read those words countless times, but this story made them feel personal.

God loved the world.

But the world is made up of individual people.

People like you.

People like me.

So when I think about Jesus hanging on that cross, I don't believe He saw humanity as some nameless crowd stretching into the future.

He knew who He was dying for.

He knew our failures before we committed them.

He knew how many times we would disappoint Him.

He knew every card that would eventually end up in those filing cabinets.

And He went to the cross anyway.

Romans 5:8 says, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

That is the heart of "He Was Thinking of Me."

When the nails were driven through His hands, He knew why He was there.

When He struggled for every breath, He knew why He was there.

When He finally said, "It is finished" (John 19:30), the price had been paid. He knew why He was there.

My price.

Your price.

Our price.

The cross was not Jesus looking at everything we had done wrong and deciding we were beyond saving.

It was Jesus looking at everything we had done wrong and saying:

You are worth saving.

So was He thinking about me?

I believe He was.

And when I finally stand before Him with nothing to offer but a lifetime of cards bearing my signature, my hope is not that I somehow managed to fill enough drawers with good things.

Because across every debt that has been forgiven is another signature.

Written in red.

Paid in full.

I was walking through an old house one day, doing my everyday inspection stuff, when I noticed a picture hanging on the wall.

It was a picture I had seen countless times before. In fact, it is probably one of the most recognizable Christian images from my childhood. I imagine a lot of grandparents had a copy hanging somewhere in their home.

It was Jesus standing outside a door, gently knocking.

I had seen that image so many times that I probably hadn't really looked at it in years. But for some reason, on that particular day, it struck me differently.

Not in a "Why is He there?" or "What is He selling?" kind of way. I think we already know the answers to those questions.

He was there for the person behind the door.

And He wasn't selling anything.

He was offering something.

Grace. Forgiveness. Freedom.

The image comes directly from the words of Jesus in Revelation 3:20:

"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him."

What struck me was that Jesus is standing at the door, but He isn't forcing His way through it. In fact there isn't even a door knob for Him to use.

He's knocking.

There's something powerful about that picture. God could demand our attention, yet He invites us. Christ offers salvation, but He allows us to decide whether we will open the door.

That became the heart of "Just Open the Door."

We spend so much of our lives searching for answers. We chase success, possessions, relationships, approval, and anything else we think might fill whatever seems to be missing inside us. Sometimes we even convince ourselves that we have to work hard enough or become good enough before God will accept us.

But Scripture says otherwise.

Ephesians 2:8–9 reminds us, "For by grace are ye saved through faith… not of works."

We don't earn our way through that door.

Jesus already paid the price.

And perhaps the greatest realization behind the song is that while we are running everywhere looking for Him, He has been near us all along.

The chorus says:

"Don't try so hard to find Me,

I've been here all along."

That thought is echoed in Acts 17:27, which tells us that God is "not far from every one of us."

The bridge carries the other part of the message:

"I'm not asking for perfection,

I'm not asking for your deeds,

Only your heart is holding the key."

Jesus isn't waiting for us to fix everything before we come to Him. He isn't standing outside with a checklist of everything we need to accomplish first.

He is simply knocking.

The forgiveness has already been purchased.

The invitation has already been given.

The hand of grace is already extended.

Romans 5:8 tells us that "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

That old picture on the wall suddenly became much more than a familiar religious image to me.

It became a picture of the Gospel.

Jesus standing patiently at the door of a heart, offering something no amount of money or good works could ever buy.

Freedom from our past sin.

Grace for our failures.

A relationship with Him.

And He's not asking us to climb a mountain to find Him.

He's already there.

We just have to open the door and ask Him in.

There is a group of guys I follow on YouTube and TikTok called Tune Designers—shout out to them. They are three gentlemen of an older persuasion who create instrumental music for other people to put lyrics to. They are fantastic musicians, and I often listen to them thinking that someday I'm going to hear something that just clicks in my mind and says, There's a song in there.

One day they were playing this down-and-dirty, bluesy, swampy piece of music that I absolutely loved.

I worked and worked trying to fit lyrics to their melody, but nothing seemed to cooperate. Eventually I realized I had written a song—it just wasn't their song.

What came out of all that struggling was "Low Down Place."

The song tells the story of a man who knows exactly where he has spent most of his life.

In the wrong place.

Not just at the wrong time, but seemingly at all the wrong times.

He isn't trying to blame somebody else for getting him there. He knows the choices were his. He understands that actions have consequences, and somewhere along the way he has come to accept the price of the life he chose to live.

Scripture is pretty clear about that truth. Galatians 6:7 tells us, "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Eventually, we all have to look at what we planted.

But that isn't where the story ends.

The heart of the song is in the chorus, where this man finally stops running, stops making excuses, and simply turns toward God.

It is repentance.

Not the polished prayer of somebody who has everything figured out, but the desperate prayer of a man who has finally realized that he cannot save himself.

That idea immediately makes me think of the prodigal son in Luke 15. He made his own choices, wasted what he had been given, and eventually found himself in about as low a place as he could imagine.

Then Scripture says, "he came to himself" (Luke 15:17).

I love that phrase.

Sometimes before we can come home, we have to finally become honest about where we are.

The son didn't pretend the mess wasn't his. He said, "Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight" (Luke 15:21).

And yet when he turned toward home, the father did not turn away from him.

He ran toward him.

That is the grace behind "Low Down Place."

Psalm 40:2 says, "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock."

You can be standing in the lowest place of your life and still not be beyond the reach of God.

You may have dug the hole yourself.

You may deserve the consequences.

You may carry regret for things you would give anything to undo.

But God's mercy doesn't begin when we finally become worthy of it.

Romans 5:8 says, "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

Repentance doesn't mean pretending the past never happened. It means finally turning away from that old road and toward the One who can lead us somewhere different.

First John 1:9 gives us that promise: "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins."

That's really what this song became.

A rough, swampy blues song about a rough life—but underneath all that grit is a simple message of grace.

A man finally looks around at the low down place where his choices have taken him and realizes he doesn't have to stay there.

God is still listening.

Forgiveness is still available.

The road home is still open.

And sometimes the first step out of the lowest place in our lives is simply looking toward heaven and saying:

"Lord, I know how I got here. Please help me find my way home."

When someone asks me where the inspiration for a song came from, my answer usually makes at least a little sense. Maybe it came from something I heard, something I saw, a memory that surfaced, or simply a subject I had been thinking about for a while.

"This Old Farm" wasn't any of those.

I was sitting in my office working on something I'm sure seemed important at the time when, for no apparent reason, a few lyrics just popped into my head. And when I say they popped into my head, I mean exactly that. There was no lead-up to them, no story I had been thinking about, and certainly no reason I should suddenly be writing from the perspective of a teenage girl growing up on a farm.

If you read the lyrics, you'll understand why that makes me laugh. I have no idea what goes on in the head of a teenage girl—and, quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to know.

But once the words started coming, I stopped what I was doing and began writing them down. Then they stopped just as suddenly as they had started, so I went back to work. A little while later, they came again. This time, though, I didn't just hear the words. I could see the scenes.

The whole song began playing like an old home movie in my head.

I could picture my aunt as a young girl on the farm our family still owns, noticing—probably the way only a sister could—how crooked my dad's rows were as he mowed hay. I could see my grandma moving from one chore to the next, keeping the house going and sending my aunt out to the garden to tend beans and tomatoes. I could hear my grandpa in the barn cussing up a storm fighting with an old tractor.

I obviously wasn't alive when those particular scenes would have taken place, but I remember Grandma and Grandpa still living on that farm, and I still spend a great deal of time working there today. Because of that, the things in the song don't feel imaginary to me. They are all still there in one form or another.

There's the old farmhouse with the big front porch, which I'm sitting in as I am writing this. There are the hay fields and the old barn. The big walnut tree still stands in the front yard, and for years a tire swing hung from one of its limbs. And yes, there is still a porch swing.

Somewhere along the way I heard a saying that every time a porch swing moves forward, it sends a prayer toward heaven. I have no idea where that saying originated, but I always loved the thought. So naturally, it found its way into the chorus:

"There's a light breeze makin' the porch swing dance,

Carrying prayers up to God just asking for a chance."

That image may be one of my favorite parts of the song because, in a way, it captures what "This Old Farm" is really about. It isn't just about buildings, fields, tractors, or dirt. It is about the faith, work, prayers, and memories of the people who came before us.

Scripture speaks often about remembering what God has done and passing those stories from one generation to the next. Psalm 145:4 says, "One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts." That feels especially fitting when I think about a family farm. Every generation leaves something behind—a story, a lesson, a scar on a barn door, a worn path through a field, or a prayer spoken when the rain would not come like it says in the chorus:

"Holding on to faith when the rain don't come."

Anyone who has depended on the land knows there are some things you simply cannot control. You can prepare the ground, plant the seed, work the field, and do everything you know to do, but eventually you have to look toward the sky and trust God with what comes next. James 5:7 describes the farmer waiting patiently for the precious fruit of the earth and for the rains that make it possible. Farming has always required that kind of patience—and that kind of faith.

The song also comes from a time that seems slower than the one we live in now. Everybody had a job. Everybody knew what needed to be done, and for the most part, they simply did it. There were no phones buzzing in their pockets, no social media competing for their attention, and no endless stream of distractions demanding to be noticed. Life certainly wasn't easier, but in some ways I think it may have been simpler.

Mama worked in the kitchen, washing, cleaning, mending, cooking, and humming old hymns while she did it. The men worked the fields and repaired whatever had broken that day. The kids worked too, because farm families have never been particularly concerned about violating a child's right to sit around and do nothing.

Even the young girl in the song has her responsibilities. She's in the garden fighting grasshoppers off the beans and tomatoes, but she's still a teenager. The radio is playing her favorite Martina McBride song, she's wondering if a boy will ask her to the harvest dance, and her dress is already hanging on the closet door.

That combination became important to me. She dreams about what might be beyond the farm, but at the same time she understands that the farm is part of her.

The bridge says:

"Papa says land remembers every hand,

Every prayer and promise made upon it stands,

And one day it'll be my turn to stay,

Or pack my dreams and drive away."

I don't believe dirt literally remembers us, of course, but I do believe places carry the evidence of the people who loved and cared for them. Scripture says something similar about the responsibility of one generation to leave something for the next. Proverbs 13:22 says, "A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children." That inheritance is not always money. Sometimes it is land. Sometimes it is a name. Sometimes it is faith, character, work ethic, and a place where your family's story still feels alive.

That is really the heart of the final line:

"This old farm ain't just dirt… it's who I am."

The older I get, the more I understand that sentence.

A farm that has been in a family for generations becomes more than acreage. You begin to realize you are walking across the same ground where people you never met once worked, worried, laughed, prayed, raised children, buried loved ones, and dreamed about what the future might hold. You are only one small piece of a much longer story.

And speaking of generations, there is one little problem with the song.

After it had already been published, I realized that apparently I can't count.

The chorus says: "This old farm's been standing six generations strong."

It should have said seven.

Our family has been on the farm since 1876, and by the time I stopped and counted everybody correctly, I discovered we had reached seven generations.

So the song may have a minor historical error, but I think I'll leave it alone. In some strange way, even the mistake feels appropriate. Family stories are rarely perfect. They get passed down, embellished, corrected, remembered differently, and sometimes somebody loses count along the way.

But the important parts remain.

The farmhouse is still there.

The barn is still there.

The fields are still being worked.

The porch swing is still swinging.

And every once in a while, when the breeze catches it just right, I like to imagine it is still sending one more prayer toward heaven.

The origin of "'Cause You Said" is actually pretty simple.

Over the years, I've written several songs that began with a particular passage of Scripture—something I read that caught my attention, stayed with me, or spoke to where I was at the time. Sometimes I go looking for an idea for a song, but other times the idea is already sitting there in the Bible waiting for me to notice it.

One day I decided to turn that around a little bit.

I asked a couple of the members of the praise band I play with what their favorite passage of Scripture was. I thought it might be interesting to see where someone else's favorite verse would take me instead of starting with one of my own.

One of them chose Psalm 91, which eventually inspired the song "Trust In You."

The other chose Jeremiah 29:1–13.

That became "'Cause You Said."

Most Christians are familiar with Jeremiah 29:11—"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." Or, as many modern translations put it, "I know the plans I have for you."

It is one of the most quoted verses in the Bible, and for good reason. It offers hope and reassurance that God has not forgotten us and that He sees farther down the road than we ever could.

But when I began working on the song, I didn't want to stop at verse 11, because the verses surrounding it give the promise much more depth.

Jeremiah was writing to people who were living in exile in Babylon. They weren't where they wanted to be, and they weren't going home anytime soon. In fact, earlier in the chapter God tells them to build houses, plant gardens, raise families, and live faithfully where they are because their time in Babylon would last for years.

That changes the way I hear verse 11.

God wasn't telling them, Everything is going to get better tomorrow.

He was telling them, I still have a plan even while you are waiting.

That thought became one of the foundations of the song:

"Though the waiting feels like sorrow,

I know You're with me every day."

Waiting is one of those things I don't think any of us are particularly good at. We pray, and then naturally we would prefer God to answer sometime in the next fifteen minutes. But Scripture is full of people who had to wait—sometimes for years—before they understood what God was doing.

Isaiah 40:31 reminds us, "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength." Waiting on God doesn't mean He has forgotten us. Sometimes the waiting itself is part of what He is doing in us.

That is why the chorus begins with God's promise:

"I know the plans I have for you,

They are plans of good, not bad,

To give you hope in the times ahead…"

The words aren't intended to be a direct quotation of Jeremiah but a musical expression of its message. God sees a future that the people living through the present difficulty cannot yet see.

I think that's something most of us need to remember from time to time. We judge God's plan by what we can see today. God sees the entire road.

The song continues:

"When you seek Me, I'll be there."

That thought comes from what may be my favorite part of the passage, Jeremiah 29:12–13: "Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

That changes the passage from simply being a promise about what God is going to do into an invitation for a relationship with Him.

God doesn't just say, I have plans for you.

He says, Call on Me. Pray to Me. Seek Me.

And then He promises, You will find Me.

That became especially important in the second chorus:

"You will find Me when you seek Me,

With your whole heart in prayer."

There are times when we spend so much energy asking God to show us His plan that we may overlook something more important—we should be seeking Him, not merely the answer.

Proverbs 3:5–6 expresses that same idea: "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."

That scripture also connects closely with the second verse:

"When I'm in the deepest valley,

I will put all my trust in You."

Trust is fairly easy when we understand what God is doing. The real test comes when we don't.

There have certainly been times in my life when I could look back and clearly see where God had been leading. The problem is that while I was actually living through those moments, I couldn't see it at all.

That is where faith enters the picture.

Hebrews 11:1 describes faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

The song puts it this way:

"I know You're working in the unseen,

Turning ashes into hope."

I like that phrase because much of God's work seems to happen where we can't see it. We see the circumstance in front of us. God sees what He is building through it.

Isaiah 61:3 speaks of God giving "beauty for ashes," which became part of the idea behind the bridge:

"You have plans beyond my vision,

You bring beauty through the pain,

So I'll trust You in the waiting,

I will praise You through the rain."

The older I get, the more I realize that faith isn't necessarily believing God will do exactly what I want Him to do.

Faith is believing God is still God when He doesn't.

That is really where the title came from.

"'Cause You Said."

It is a simple answer to a complicated question.

Why should I trust when I don't understand? Because You said.

Why should I believe You are working when I can't see anything happening? Because You said.

Why should I believe there is still hope when the road ahead doesn't look particularly hopeful? Because You said.

Why should I seek You believing You will hear me? Because You said.

The bridge sums that up:

"You are faithful through the ages,

Every word You've said is true."

Numbers 23:19 says, "God is not a man, that he should lie." And Hebrews 10:23 tells us to "hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised.)"

That may ultimately be the message of the entire song.

Our confidence doesn't come from knowing exactly what tomorrow will look like. It doesn't come from understanding every turn in the road. And it certainly doesn't come from everything in life going according to our plans.

It comes from knowing the One who made the promise.

Jeremiah 29 wasn't written to people whose lives were going perfectly. It was written to people living through a difficult chapter who could not yet see how the story would end.

God told them there was still a future.

He told them there was still hope.

He told them to call on Him.

He told them to seek Him with their whole heart.

And He promised they would find Him.

So when I don't know what comes next, I can still trust.

'Cause You said.

"Dust On My Bible" is one of those songs that came from something I heard somewhere along the way. I honestly don't remember where I first heard the phrase, but I liked the visual immediately—a Bible sitting untouched long enough for dust to collect on its cover.

There was something about that picture that bothered me.

Not because of the dust itself, but because of what had to happen for the dust to get there.

Distractions seem to find their way into a lot of my songs. Apparently, somewhere in my subconscious, I must think I have a problem with distractions. There is probably more truth to that than I would like to admit. But I also think distraction has become one of the great spiritual problems of our time.

Most of us don't deliberately decide to push God out of our lives. It usually happens much more quietly.

We get busy.

There is work to do, someplace to go, something to fix, somebody who needs us, a television show to watch, a phone to check, or one more thing that absolutely has to get done today.

None of those things is necessarily bad. That's what makes distraction so easy to overlook. Sometimes the things that pull us away from God aren't sinful things at all. They are simply other things that slowly begin taking His place.

Eventually, without ever intending to, we can find ourselves spiritually dry with a Bible sitting nearby gathering dust.

That was the picture I wanted the song to capture.

Before I got very far into writing it, I went online and listened to several songs with the same title, or at least the same general theme. Apparently I wasn't the first songwriter to think that "Dust On My Bible" sounded like a pretty good song title.

I listened to several of them, but none approached the idea quite the way I was hearing it in my head, so I decided to head down my own road with it.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a fairly long road.

This was one of those songs that made me work for it.

I started with the chorus and had a few ideas for the first verse, but nothing was coming very easily. Eventually I decided to quit forcing it and set the song aside.

A few weeks later, an idea popped into my head that helped straighten out the first verse and gave me the direction for the second. I worked on it for a while, got those pieces together, and then life got in the way again and I set it aside.

So, ironically, I got distracted from writing a song about being distracted.

During that hiatus, however, the song didn't completely leave me alone. Melody ideas kept floating around in my head. I would hear a phrase sung one way and then another. Eventually I had a chance to sit down and work through the music.

Then I revised it.

And revised it.

And revised it again.

I struggled especially with the timing and word phrasing. There were places where I knew exactly what I wanted the song to say, but the words and melody weren't particularly interested in cooperating with each another.

Eventually I got them shoehorned into place.

As the song came together, I realized it wasn't simply about somebody who had forgotten to read their Bible.

It was about someone who had filled his life with everything except God.

The first verse says:

"I walked through the valley so empty and cold,

Searching for hope in the things I could hold.

My hands were so full, but my heart was so dry,

I heard Your voice call through the night."

I particularly like the contrast between full hands and a dry heart.

We can spend a lifetime filling our hands—possessions, accomplishments, money, work, hobbies, responsibilities, entertainment—and still discover that none of those things can satisfy what is missing inside us. Jesus calls it "Living Water."

Jesus warned about exactly that in Luke 12:15, saying, "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth."

The psalmist describes the other side of that emptiness in Psalm 42:1–2: "As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God."

That is the person I hear in the first verse. His hands are full, but his soul is thirsty.

Then comes the chorus:

"Dust on my Bible, dust on my soul,

I forgot the One who could make me whole.

But Your mercy kept reaching for me,

Lord help me wipe the dust from my Bible."

That line—"dust on my Bible, dust on my soul"—became the heart of the song.

The dust on the Bible is visible.

The dust on the soul isn't.

One can be wiped away with a rag. The other requires something much deeper.

Yet even while the person in the song has wandered away, God continues reaching toward him.

That thought appears throughout Scripture. One of my favorite examples is the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15:11–32. The son walks away from his father, wastes what he has been given, and eventually realizes how far he has fallen. But when he finally turns toward home, the father sees him "a great way off" and runs to meet him.

That is the mercy I had in mind when I wrote: "But Your mercy kept reaching for me."

The second verse moves from distraction into something even more dangerous—self-reliance:

"I built up my kingdom on shifting sand,

Dreaming of glory made by my own hands.

But my castles of pride crumble into the sea,

Still You are there, You're waiting for me."

That imagery comes almost directly from Jesus' words in Matthew 7:24–27. Jesus compares the person who hears His words and follows them to a wise man who builds his house upon a rock. The person who hears but does not obey is like someone building on sand.

Eventually the rain comes.

The flood rises.

And whatever was built on the sand falls.

That doesn't only apply to openly sinful lives. We can build some pretty respectable-looking kingdoms without God. Careers, reputations, possessions, accomplishments—even ministries—can become something we begin trusting more than the One who gave them to us.

Pride whispers, Look what I built.

Scripture answers in Psalm 127:1: "Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it."

That is why the castles in the song have to fall. They were built by my own hands for my own glory on ground that could never support them.

But once again, God is still there.

Waiting.

The third verse is where everything begins to change:

"I open the pages, Your words came alive,

Rivers of grace flow through these tired eyes.

My faith, once a whisper, now rises in song,

You never left, You carried me home."

The Bible that had been gathering dust is finally opened.

And God's Word does what God's Word has always done.

Hebrews 4:12 says: "For the word of God is quick, and powerful." The word quick there means living.

That is exactly what I wanted the line "Your words came alive" to communicate. The words on those pages were never dead. I had simply stopped listening to them.

Psalm 119:105 says: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."

The light had always been there.

I just hadn't opened the book.

The phrase "rivers of grace" also reminds me of Jesus' words in John 7:38: "He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

The person who began the song spiritually dry is now standing in living water.

Then the bridge takes the imagery even further:

"Breathe new life into these bones,

Write Your name Lord upon my stone,

Raise me up from the grave I chose,

Let the bells ring when You carry me home."

Those first words deliberately bring to mind Ezekiel 37, the vision of the valley of dry bones.

God asks Ezekiel, "Son of man, can these bones live?"

From a human perspective, the answer would seem obvious. They are dry bones scattered across a valley. There is nothing left to save.

But God tells Ezekiel to prophesy over them, and eventually breath enters them and they live.

That image fits this song perfectly.

Something can appear spiritually dead and still not be beyond God's ability to restore it.

The line "Raise me up from the grave I chose" is important to me too, because sometimes we have to admit that the hole we're asking God to rescue us from is one we dug ourself.

We can't blame every valley on somebody else.

Sometimes we chose the distraction.

We built the kingdom.

We neglected the relationship.

We let the dust collect.

And still God offers grace.

Ephesians 2:4–5 says: "But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ."

Dead doesn't have to remain dead when God breathes life into it.

That is why, when the chorus returns, it means something different than it did the first time.

"Dust on my Bible, dust on my soul,

I forgot the One who could make me whole.

But Your mercy kept reaching for me…"

At the beginning of the song, those words are a confession.

By the end, they're a testimony.

You kept reaching for me.

I wandered. You reached.

I filled my hands with things that couldn't satisfy me. You reached.

I built my little kingdom on shifting sand. You reached.

I let Your Word sit unopened long enough to gather dust.

And You still reached.

James 4:8 gives us one of the simplest promises in Scripture: "Draw close to God, and he will draw close to you."

Maybe that is really what "Dust On My Bible" is about.

It isn't intended to make somebody feel guilty because they missed their Bible reading this morning. It's meant to make us notice how easily distance can develop between us and God.

Most of the time it doesn't happen all at once.

It happens one distraction at a time.

One busy day.

One missed prayer.

One more thing we convince ourselves is more important.

Until eventually we notice the dust.

And maybe that dust can become a blessing if it causes us to stop long enough to realize what we've been missing.

Pick up the Bible.

Wipe off the dust.

Open the pages.

Listen again.

God's Word was never gone.

And neither was He.

"Jesus, You're My Lighthouse" took a little longer and a considerably more crooked road to become the song it is today.

The song was originally inspired by another song titled "Lighthouse," a country-pop love song written and recorded by an independent singer-songwriter in Nashville.

At the time, I had already been thinking about writing a song centered around the image of God as a lighthouse. I liked the visual immediately. A lighthouse stands where the water can be dangerous, shining through darkness, storms, fog, and rough seas. It doesn't remove the rocks. It doesn't calm the storm. It simply shows you where you are and points you toward safety.

That sounded a lot like faith to me.

So, as I sometimes do when I'm developing an idea, I started listening to other songs built around that same image to see how different writers had approached it.

That's when I came across "Lighthouse."

I really liked the structure of the song and its chord progression. There were pieces of the melody and the way the lyrics moved that fit nicely with what I had already been thinking about.

So I started working with it.

I changed lyrics, moved things around, added my own ideas, and eventually blended everything together into a Christian version built around Jesus as the light guiding us home.

Our band played it a couple of times, and it worked pretty well.

There was only one little problem.

It wasn't completely mine.

Before I could make a polished recording and distribute the song, I knew I needed permission from the owners of the original work. Because my version was derived from an existing published song, changing the subject and writing new lyrics didn't suddenly make the underlying song mine.

So I started trying to get permission.

That turned out to be considerably more complicated than writing the song.

The original had four songwriters, and the publishing and distribution rights were shared, which meant I couldn't simply ask one person and be done with it. I began with the primary recording artist and tried for about a month to make contact.

Nothing.

Eventually I figured I wasn't getting anywhere, so I moved on and started trying to contact another one of the writers.

And wouldn't you know it—as soon as I did that, the first artist finally got back to me.

Apparently the secret to getting someone to answer is to give up on them first.

She listened to my version and told me that she loved it.

Unfortunately, she also explained that because there were four writers involved and the rights were fairly complicated, she couldn't give me permission to release my version.

I didn't get the answer I wanted, but I did get something I wasn't expecting.

An established touring and recording artist told me she loved what I had done with her song.

By the way, I kept that message. I'm not deleting that one.

Every songwriter deals with a certain amount of wondering whether what they are creating is actually any good. So when somebody who makes a living writing and performing music tells you she loves something you wrote, even if the next sentence is essentially "but you can't use it," you save the message.

Still, the answer was no.

So it was back to the drawing board.

I could have simply abandoned the song, but by then the lighthouse idea had become something completely separate in my mind from the song that originally inspired it.

I still wanted to write it.

The problem was that I could no longer rely on the original melody, lyrics, or structure. If I was going to release the song, I needed to start over and make it truly my own.

So that's what I did.

New melody. New lyrics. A new approach.

The only thing I refused to give up was the lighthouse.

Because by that point I had realized how naturally the image connected to Scripture.

The Bible may not describe Jesus specifically as a lighthouse, but it repeatedly describes Him as light.

Jesus says in John 8:12: "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life."

That may be the clearest biblical foundation for the entire song.

A lighthouse doesn't do much good if you refuse to follow the light.

Neither does faith.

Jesus doesn't simply say, I will shine.

He says: Follow Me.

And if we do, we don't have to walk blindly through the darkness.

I also kept coming back to Psalm 119:105: "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path."

I love the way that verse describes God's guidance.

A lamp doesn't necessarily illuminate the next fifty miles.

It gives you enough light for the next step.

I think sometimes we would prefer God to operate more like stadium lighting. We'd like Him to illuminate the entire road ahead so we could see every turn, every obstacle, and exactly where we're going to end up.

Most of the time, He doesn't.

Sometimes He gives us enough light for one step.

Then another.

Then another.

That requires trust.

And that is where the lighthouse image became even more meaningful to me.

A ship at sea doesn't need the lighthouse to explain the entire ocean.

It needs the light to tell it where safety is.

There may still be waves. There may still be wind. There may still be darkness.

The light doesn't promise an easy journey.

It gives you something reliable to steer toward.

Psalm 43:3 says: "O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me."

That's really the prayer behind "Jesus, You're My Lighthouse."

Lead me.

When I can't see clearly, lead me.

When the water gets rough, lead me.

When I've drifted farther from shore than I intended, lead me.

When I'm not sure which direction is home, give me something I can fix my eyes on.

That idea also reminds me of Hebrews 12:2, which tells us to be "looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith."

There are plenty of other lights competing for our attention.

Some are bright. Some are attractive. Some promise to take us somewhere wonderful.

But not every light leads home.

A lighthouse matters because you have to know which light to follow.

There is another side to the image as well.

Jesus calls Himself the light of the world, but then in Matthew 5:14–16, He turns to His followers and says: "Ye are the light of the world."

Then He tells us to let our light shine before others.

That doesn't mean we become the source of the light.

We reflect His.

The moon doesn't create its own light either, but on a dark enough night it can still show somebody the road.

Maybe that's part of our job as Christians.

We don't have to have all the answers.

We don't have to save anybody ourselves.

We simply need to reflect enough of Christ that someone wandering in the dark can see where the light is coming from.

That thought became especially meaningful to me because of the unusual way this song came together.

The first version wasn't something I could release.

At the time, that was frustrating.

I had already put work into it. Our band had played it. The song seemed to work. The original artist even liked what I had done.

It would have been much easier if she had simply said yes.

But she didn't.

And looking back, I'm glad I respected that answer.

Because being forced to start over made me dig deeper into what I actually wanted the song to say.

The first version began with somebody else's song.

The final version began with the message.

There's a difference.

Sometimes a closed door isn't the end of an idea.

It's just God steering you toward another route.

Proverbs 16:9 says: "A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps."

I certainly had my way planned.

Apparently God—or at least four songwriters and a complicated publishing agreement—had another route in mind.

Either way, I eventually got where I was supposed to go.

And maybe that's appropriate for a song about guidance.

What began as an attempt to adapt another songwriter's work eventually became something that was genuinely mine.

But the heart of the song never changed.

There are storms in life.

There are places where the water gets rough.

There are times when the darkness makes it difficult to tell which direction we're going.

Sometimes we drift. Sometimes we become distracted. Sometimes we know perfectly well where the light is and still decide to steer somewhere else.

But the light remains.

Jesus says in John 1:5: "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not."

Darkness doesn't extinguish the light.

The storm doesn't extinguish the light.

Our wandering doesn't extinguish the light.

It keeps shining.

Calling us back.

Showing us the way.

Pointing us home.

The bottom line is that this song was already inside me, and one way or another it was going to have to come out.

The first path didn't work.

So I found another one.

And maybe, in its own small way, that's how I let my light shine.

Jesus, You're my lighthouse.

When I can't see the shore, keep shining.

I'll follow the light home.

"Trust In You" is one of those songs with a pretty simple origin story.

As I mentioned in the story behind "'Cause You Said," one day I asked a couple of the members of the praise band I play with what their favorite passages of Scripture were. I had written several songs based on Bible passages that meant something to me, and I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I started with a passage that was meaningful to somebody else.

One of those band members has a sweet, beautiful voice, and when I asked her what her favorite passage was, she told me Psalm 91.

So I wrote "Trust In You" for her to sing.

This is one of the few "Bible verse songs" I have written that mostly wrote itself. Usually I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to take Scripture and turn it into lyrics without simply making it sound like I put a Bible verse to music. Psalm 91 didn't give me much trouble.

The words already had movement.

They already had pictures.

They already had emotion.

And most importantly, they already had a message.

The Psalm flowed naturally into a melody, and once I got started, the song came together fairly easily.

The first verse stays very close to the opening of Psalm 91:

"He who dwells in the secret place,

Of the Most High will find His grace,

I will rest beneath His wings,

For He is my refuge and my King."

Psalm 91 begins: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."

Then just a few verses later comes one of my favorite pictures in the Psalm: "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust." — Psalm 91:4

I love that image.

God certainly doesn't have literal wings—well, I guess He can have them if He wants—but the picture is easy to understand. It is the image of protection—the way a bird gathers its young beneath its wings when danger comes.

There is something important in that word dwells, too.

The Psalm doesn't say the person occasionally visits the secret place of the Most High.

He dwells there.

There is a difference between visiting God when things go wrong and living every day in a relationship with Him. The safety Psalm 91 describes isn't just about hiding from trouble. It is about knowing where home is.

That thought led naturally into the chorus:

"I will trust in You,

For You are my shelter, my shield.

I will trust in You,

In You I'm safe and I'm healed.

I will trust in You,

'Cause You will never let me go."

The phrase "I will trust in You" comes almost directly from Psalm 91:2: "I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust."

That became the center of the whole song.

Not I hope things will work out.

Not I trust in my own ability to fix it.

Not even I trust that nothing difficult will ever happen.

Simply: I will trust in You.

That distinction is important because Psalm 91 is sometimes read as though faith means nothing bad will ever happen to us. I don't think that's the message of the Psalm at all. The passage itself talks about terror, pestilence, arrows, destruction, danger, and enemies.

Trouble is obviously present.

The promise is that God is present too.

That became the message of the second verse:

"Though my enemy comes near,

I will not fear, for You are here,

You've given Your angels the power,

To keep me safe, I will not cower."

Psalm 91:5 says: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day."

And verses 11–12 say: "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways."

Again, what strikes me is not the absence of danger.

It is the absence of fear.

Those are two very different things.

There are plenty of places in Scripture where God's people found themselves in frightening circumstances. Daniel still went into the lions' den. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego still went into the furnace. David still faced Goliath.

Trusting God didn't always keep them from entering the difficult place.

It meant they didn't enter it alone.

Isaiah 41:10 expresses that same promise: "Fear thou not; for I am with thee."

Sometimes that may be all we really need to know.

You are here.

The bridge moves into another promise found near the end of Psalm 91:

"When I call, You will answer,

You rescue me from danger.

I will rest in Your strong tower,

My heart is safe in Your power."

Psalm 91:15 says: "He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble."

I especially like those last words.

God doesn't say, He will call upon Me, and I will make sure he never experiences trouble.

He says: "I will be with him in trouble."

There is a big difference.

Sometimes our prayer is, God, get me out of this.

And sometimes God's answer is, I'm going through it with you.

The "strong tower" line comes from another passage that fits beautifully with Psalm 91. Proverbs 18:10 says: "The name of the LORD is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe."

That's the picture I wanted in the bridge. When everything around us feels uncertain, there is still somewhere to run.

The third verse draws from one of the most recognizable sections of Psalm 91:

"Though a thousand may fall,

Ten thousand more at Your call,

But evil will not touch me,

For Jehovah will set me free."

Psalm 91:7 says: "A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee."

Those are dramatic words, and they fit naturally into a song. But underneath the dramatic imagery is a very simple truth: what is happening around me does not change who God is.

The world can look like it is falling apart.

People around me can lose hope.

Circumstances can change overnight.

And I can still say: I will trust in You.

That is why the final chorus adds another line: "For Your love will never fail."

That thought runs throughout Scripture. Lamentations 3:22–23 tells us that it is because of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed and that His compassions are new every morning.

And Romans 8:38–39 reminds us that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

That brings the song back to its final statement:

"I will trust in You,

'Cause You will never let me go."

To me, that's really what Psalm 91 is about.

It's not a promise that Christians will never become sick, never suffer loss, never be frightened, or never find themselves in circumstances they don't understand.

It is a declaration about where we choose to place our trust when those things happen.

There will be valleys.

There will be nights when something frightens us.

There will be things beyond our control.

There will probably even be times when our faith doesn't feel particularly strong.

But our security doesn't depend on how tightly we can hold onto God.

It depends on how tightly He holds onto us.

Jesus says in John 10:28: "Neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand."

That's a pretty good place to be.

Under His wings.

Inside the strong tower.

Held in His hand.

And whatever comes next, we can still say:

I will trust in You.

When I wrote "To God Be The Glory," I had a pretty specific idea in mind. I wanted to write something in the spirit of the Doxology, but with a more modern musical feel.

The Doxology is about as simple as a worship song can be. There is no complicated story, no long explanation, and no attempt to say everything that could possibly be said about God. It simply calls God's people to praise Him.

"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow."

That's a hard thought to improve upon.

What I wanted to do was take that same simplicity and reverence and put it into a song that felt a little more contemporary—something short, prayerful, quiet, and deliberate. Not a song that needed to build into some huge musical moment, but one that could simply create a space where people could stop for a few minutes and praise God for who He is.

I think "To God Be The Glory" does that.

The connection to the Doxology is obvious from the very first line:

"Praise God from whom all blessings flow,

In every season, high and low.

His grace and love, they never cease,

In Him, we find eternal peace."

That opening line originally comes from the Doxology written by Thomas Ken more than three hundred years ago, but the thought behind it is much older than that.

James 1:17 says: "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights."

Everything we have ultimately comes from God.

That's easy to say when life is going well. The harder line may actually be the next one:

"In every season, high and low."

Praise shouldn't depend entirely upon our circumstances.

There are seasons when praising God feels natural. The family is healthy, the bills are paid, prayers seem to be answered, and life is moving in the direction we hoped it would.

Then there are the other seasons.

Those are the times when praise becomes less of a reaction to our circumstances and more of a declaration of our faith.

Habakkuk understood that. Near the end of his book, he describes a situation where the crops have failed, the fields produce no food, and the livestock are gone. Then he says in Habakkuk 3:18: "Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation."

I love that little word yet.

Things may not be going the way I hoped. Yet I will praise Him.

I may not understand what God is doing. Yet I will praise Him.

High season or low season, God has not changed.

The chorus brings the song back to its main purpose:

"Hallelujah, praise His name,

Forever His love will remain.

With grateful hearts, we sing this song,

To God be glory all day long."

Hallelujah is itself a call to worship. It simply means "Praise the Lord."

Psalm 113:3 says: "From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the LORD'S name is to be praised."

That verse fits especially well with the line: "To God be glory all day long."

Morning to evening.

Beginning to end.

Not just during the twenty minutes of music on Sunday morning.

Worship isn't supposed to stop when the last chord fades.

That thought also appears in 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18: "Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In every thing give thanks."

I don't think that means we spend every waking minute walking around singing worship songs. We'd probably become difficult people to work and live with if we did.

I think it means praise and gratitude become part of the way we live—that everything we do is done with an awareness of whether it is honoring God.

The second verse turns from God's blessings to the God who created everything:

"Creator of the earth and skies,

In awe, we lift our joyful cries.

His mercy reaches far and wide,

In Him, we safely do abide."

Creation itself is one of the oldest reasons for worship in Scripture.

Psalm 19:1 says: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork."

Sometimes we make worship more complicated than it needs to be.

Walk outside on a clear night. Look at the stars. Watch a sunset. Listen to thunder rolling across the distance. Stand somewhere far enough away from everything we've built that you can actually see what God built.

Here in Kansas, that's just part of life. Pretty much anywhere you go you can see the stars, watch a sunset, and not only hear the thunder rolling across the prairie, but see the lightning from miles away. All of these things are part of God's handiwork.

Creation has a way of putting us back in our proper place.

The One who created all of that is the same God who knows us by name.

That should create a little awe.

The bridge is probably where the idea behind the song becomes clearest:

"Let all God's creation shout His praise,

With ancient songs and future phrase.

In unity, our voices raise,

To honor Him all our days."

I especially like the thought of "ancient songs and future phrase."

The language of worship changes.

The instruments change.

The melodies change.

The churches change.

A song written hundreds of years ago may be sung beside one written last Tuesday.

But the One being worshiped hasn't changed at all.

Psalm 145:4 says: "One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts."

That's a beautiful picture of worship moving through time.

One generation sings. Then another. Then another.

The words may change, but the praise continues.

That was really what I was trying to do with this song. I wasn't trying to replace something like the Doxology. I was trying to join the same stream of worship with words and music from another generation.

The final verse makes that connection even more directly:

"Oh, praise the Father, Spirit, Son,

The Trinity, the Holy One.

Eternal God, we lift You high,

Forevermore, Your praises fly."

That verse intentionally echoes the final line of the traditional Doxology: "Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

From beginning to end, Christian worship is centered on God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Jesus gave that Trinitarian language directly in Matthew 28:19, telling His followers to baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

And Revelation gives us a picture of worship that continues beyond anything we experience here. Revelation 5:13 describes every creature in heaven and earth offering blessing, honor, glory, and power to God.

That's where all of this is heading.

The song eventually returns again and again to the same simple words:

"Hallelujah, praise His name,

Forever His love will remain.

With grateful hearts, we sing this song,

To God be glory all day long."

There isn't really a hidden meaning in this song.

There isn't supposed to be.

Sometimes a song doesn't need to tell a complicated story.

Sometimes we don't need to ask God for anything.

We don't need to explain our problems.

We don't need to understand tomorrow.

We don't even need very many words.

Sometimes worship can simply be stopping long enough to recognize who God is, remembering where our blessings come from, and saying:

Thank You.

Hallelujah.

Praise Your name.

And above everything else—

To God be the glory.

"Free To Soar" actually began about a decade ago as part of another song that I never finished.

Like a lot of things I've written over the years, pieces of that old song eventually found their way into the collection of half-finished verses, choruses, lines, and ideas that I couldn't quite bring myself to throw away. Every once in a while I'll go digging through those old pieces to see if something still has a little life left in it.

That is how I found "Free To Soar" again.

When I came across it, something about it caught my attention in a way it hadn't ten years earlier, and I suddenly had the urge to start working on it again.

Apparently God felt I was ready for this one now.

I have learned that sometimes an idea can be perfectly good and still arrive before I know what to do with it. I can try to force it into a song, but if it isn't ready—or maybe if I'm not ready—it usually doesn't work. So I put it away.

Then years later I can stumble across the same few lines, and suddenly I understand what they were supposed to become.

Maybe Ecclesiastes 3:1 applies to songwriting too: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."

Apparently this song's season took about ten years to arrive.

The picture I had in mind when I finally returned to "Free To Soar" was very simple.

We carry things.

Worry. Fear. Regret. Guilt. Shame.

Some of those burdens come from things that have happened to us. Some come from things we've done ourselves. Some are things God has already forgiven, but for whatever reason, we keep picking them back up and carrying them around.

After a while, they don't just feel like burdens.

They begin to feel like chains.

That became the opening picture of the song:

"I was bound in chains of sorrow,

Held by fear, regret, and shame,

But You washed me in the water,

And Your blood has called my name."

Scripture uses the imagery of bondage and freedom over and over again.

Jesus says in John 8:36: "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."

I love those final two words: Free indeed.

Not partly free.

Not forgiven but still permanently chained to everything we've done.

Not rescued but required to drag the old chains behind us for the rest of our lives.

Free.

That doesn't mean our past disappears. It doesn't mean there are never consequences or scars. But it does mean our past no longer has the authority to tell us who we are.

The line "You washed me in the water" naturally brings baptism to mind, but it also connects to the larger biblical picture of God washing us clean.

Isaiah 1:18 says: "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."

And 1 John 1:7 tells us that "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

That's the freedom I wanted at the beginning of the song.

The person in the first verse isn't simply having a bad day.

He is carrying sorrow, fear, regret, and shame—and then Christ changes what those things are allowed to do to him.

The second verse answers the first:

"Now the weight has all been lifted,

Every wound Your touch has mended,

You have calmed the storm inside me,

And so my heart belongs to You."

I think most of us understand what it feels like to carry a weight nobody else can see.

You can look perfectly fine on the outside and still be hauling around something incredibly heavy on the inside.

Jesus gives one of the most comforting invitations in Scripture in Matthew 11:28: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

There is something interesting about that invitation.

Jesus doesn't say, Get everything straightened out, put your baggage away, and then come see Me.

He says: Come. Bring the weight. Bring the fear. Bring the regret. Bring the shame. Bring whatever you've been carrying.

Then let Him do what you haven't been able to do for yourself.

The line "You have calmed the storm inside me" came from the familiar picture of Jesus calming the storm in Mark 4:35–41. The disciples are terrified while the wind and waves beat against the boat, and Jesus simply says: "Peace, be still."

The wind stops.

The sea becomes calm.

I have always liked that story because sometimes the storm we most desperately need Jesus to calm isn't the one around us.

It's the one inside us.

Fear can be a storm. Guilt can be a storm. Grief can be a storm. Worry can keep churning long after everything around us appears calm.

Sometimes what we need most is to hear those same words: Peace, be still.

Once the weight is lifted, the central picture of the song becomes possible:

"I am free to soar and fly above,

On the wings of grace and love,

Every chain is gone, my soul will sing,

Salvation's here through my risen King."

The image of soaring naturally makes me think of Isaiah 40:31: "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles."

There is something beautiful about the difference between being chained down and soaring.

One is bondage. The other is freedom.

One keeps your eyes on the ground. The other changes your perspective completely.

That is what God's grace does.

Grace doesn't pretend the chains never existed. Grace breaks them.

Grace doesn't say our sin wasn't serious. Grace says Christ was greater.

Grace doesn't tell us there is nothing in our past worth regretting. It tells us we don't have to live there anymore.

Paul writes in Romans 8:1: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."

That's an important distinction because conviction and condemnation are not the same thing.

Conviction points us toward God. Condemnation tells us we aren't worthy to go to Him.

Conviction says, This needs to change. Condemnation says, You will never change.

Grace says, Give it to Me.

And once we have honestly given something to God, maybe we need to stop sneaking back later and taking it out of His hands.

I think that's especially true of guilt and shame.

We may ask God to forgive us, believe Scripture when it says He has forgiven us, and then spend the next twenty years punishing ourselves for the very thing He has already released.

Psalm 103:12 gives a much different picture: "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us."

That's a long way.

God doesn't forgive us and then leave our sins sitting nearby so He can remind us of them whenever we get a little too comfortable.

He removes them.

The last line of the chorus is really what makes all of that possible: "Salvation's here through my risen King."

Without the resurrection, this would simply be a song about feeling better.

But Christian freedom is rooted in something much greater than an improved attitude.

Christ died. Christ rose.

And because He lives, the chains that once held us no longer get the final word.

Romans 6:4 says that just as Christ was raised from the dead, "even so we also should walk in newness of life."

Newness of life.

Not the same old life with slightly lighter chains.

A new life.

I deliberately wanted "Free To Soar" to stay simple, light, and to the point. It didn't need a complicated story or a dozen verses.

The picture itself says most of what I wanted to say.

Imagine trying to fly while hanging onto everything that has ever frightened you, hurt you, embarrassed you, or filled you with regret.

You can't.

At some point, you have to let go.

1 Peter 5:7 says: "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you."

I like the word casting.

It doesn't sound like God intends for us to politely hand Him our worries and then ask for them back five minutes later.

Throw them over there. Give them to Him. Leave them there.

And maybe that's the real message behind "Free To Soar."

Some of us aren't waiting for God to unlock the chains.

He already has.

We're just still holding onto them.

Fear doesn't have to own us.

Shame doesn't get to name us.

Regret doesn't have to define us.

Our past does not get the final word.

Jesus does.

So give Him the worry.

Give Him the fear.

Give Him the guilt.

Give Him the shame.

Let the chains fall.

And then do what He set you free to do.

Soar.

"The Season To Sing" doesn't have some deep or complicated story behind it. I simply felt like writing a Christmas song.

More specifically, I wanted to write about Christmas as a time of joy, hope, celebration, and new life because Christ came into the world.

Christmas music can go in a lot of directions. There are songs about snow, sleighs, trees, presents, family gatherings, and coming home for Christmas. I enjoy all of those things as much as anyone, but I wanted this song to stay centered on the reason Christians celebrate Christmas in the first place.

A child was born.

A Savior came.

God stepped into His creation.

And because of that, there is a reason to sing.

That thought became the title: "The Season To Sing."

The first verse begins with the familiar picture of the night Christ was born:

"The stars shine bright on this holy night,

A gift of love has come to light,

Born in a manger, a child so pure,

His love will last, forever endure."

There is something about the Christmas story that never seems to lose its power no matter how many times we hear it.

We know the pieces.

Bethlehem. The manger. Mary and Joseph. The shepherds. The angels. The child.

Yet every Christmas we return to the story again.

Luke 2:7 tells us that Mary "brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger."

It is such a humble beginning for someone Scripture identifies as the Savior of the world.

No palace. No throne. No royal celebration.

Just a child lying in a manger.

But that child was God's gift to us.

John 3:16 says it in the words nearly every Christian knows: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son."

That is why I used the line: "A gift of love has come to light."

Christmas is ultimately about a gift.

Not one wrapped beneath a tree, but the gift of Christ Himself.

The chorus states the main idea of the song:

"This is the reason, the season to sing,

The hope and the joy that Christmas brings,

Emmanuel's here, with us today,

His love will guide us all the way."

I like the play on reason and season because it gets directly to what I wanted the song to say.

Christmas gives us plenty of reasons to celebrate, but Christ is the reason behind the celebration.

The line "Emmanuel's here" comes from one of the most important names given to Jesus.

Matthew 1:23 says: "They shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."

I think we sometimes hear that phrase so often at Christmas that we can miss how remarkable it really is.

God with us.

Not God watching from somewhere far away.

Not God sending instructions from heaven.

God came to us.

John describes it another way in John 1:14: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."

That may be one of the greatest truths contained in the Christmas story. The God who created us chose to enter our world and live among us.

That is certainly a reason to sing.

The second verse moves into the celebration announced by the angels:

"The angels sing, the world is blessed,

A Savior born, we find our rest,

With every heart, we lift His name,

Christ has come to take away our pain."

The angel's announcement to the shepherds in Luke 2:10–11 may be one of the clearest statements of what Christmas is about: "Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy… For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

There are several words in that announcement that I love.

Good tidings. Great joy. A Savior.

The first Christmas announcement wasn't here is another religious obligation.

It was good news.

And it was supposed to bring joy.

Then suddenly the sky was filled with angels praising God and saying in Luke 2:14: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

That thought leads directly into the bridge:

"Peace on earth, goodwill to all,

He answers our prayers when we call,

The light of His love will never fade,

He came to save, and His price was paid."

The beginning of that bridge is Christmas.

The ending points toward Easter.

I think that is important.

The manger is beautiful, but Jesus didn't come simply so we could celebrate His birth once a year.

He came for a purpose.

Matthew 1:21 says: "Thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins."

Before Jesus was even born, His mission was already being declared.

He came to save.

That is why the line "He came to save, and His price was paid" belongs in a Christmas song.

You can't really separate Bethlehem from Calvary.

The baby in the manger would become the man on the cross.

The hands wrapped in swaddling clothes would one day bear the nails.

The child the angels announced as Savior would eventually accomplish the salvation they proclaimed.

And the story wouldn't end at the cross either.

He would rise again.

That is why I think of Christmas not only as a celebration of birth, but also as a celebration of hope and new life.

Isaiah had spoken of that hope centuries earlier. Isaiah 9:6 says: "For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given."

Then it gives Him names: "Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace."

That is an awful lot resting on the shoulders of a baby lying in a manger.

But that's the wonder of Christmas.

The song also uses the image of light: "A gift of love has come to light" and later "The light of His love will never fade."

Light is woven throughout the biblical story of Christ.

Isaiah 9:2 speaks of people walking in darkness who have "seen a great light."

Jesus later says in John 8:12: "I am the light of the world."

I think that's one reason lights have always seemed so appropriate at Christmas.

We hang them on houses. We wrap them around trees. We put candles in windows and throughout our churches.

Whether we consciously think about it or not, light is part of the language of Christmas.

Darkness doesn't win.

Light has come.

And that brings the song right back to the chorus: "This is the reason, the season to sing, the hope and the joy that Christmas brings."

I wanted "The Season To Sing" to feel joyful without being complicated.

Christmas doesn't really need me to make it complicated.

The shepherds understood what to do. They went to see Jesus and then returned "glorifying and praising God" according to Luke 2:20.

The wise men understood it too. Matthew 2:11 says that when they saw the child, "they fell down, and worshipped him."

That's really the response the Christmas story has always invited.

Come and see. Then worship.

The decorations will eventually come down.

The presents will be put away.

The Christmas music will disappear from the radio for another year.

Life will return to normal.

But Emmanuel doesn't leave when Christmas ends.

God is still with us.

That's why the final line of the song isn't limited to Christmas Day: "His love will guide us all the way."

From Bethlehem forward, Christ came to bring hope into darkness, peace into fear, salvation to the lost, and the presence of God into the lives of His people.

So while Christmas may be the season to sing, Christ is the reason we can sing every season.

A Savior has been born.

Emmanuel—God with us.

And that is more than enough reason to sing.

I wrote "He Rolled The Stone Away" shortly after we were all able to return to church following COVID.

We were getting close to Easter, and after everything we had been through, I felt like we needed a song that wasn't quiet or reflective. We needed something joyful. Something triumphant. Something that could simply stand up and shout: He has risen!

For months, churches had been empty or nearly empty. Worship had moved online, people were separated from one another, and something we had always taken for granted—simply gathering together as the church—suddenly wasn't so simple anymore.

Then we began coming back.

There was something special about hearing people sing together again.

And as Easter approached, it seemed especially appropriate that we were returning to our churches to celebrate the story of an empty tomb.

After a season that had been filled with so much uncertainty, isolation, sickness, fear, and loss, I wanted "He Rolled The Stone Away" to sound like victory.

I also knew exactly how I wanted the music to begin.

Dark. Ominous. Almost uncomfortable.

I wanted the opening to feel like those moments before sunrise on that first Easter morning. Jesus had been crucified. His body had been placed in a tomb. A stone had been rolled across the entrance.

For the people who loved Him, it must have appeared that the story was over.

Then came Sunday morning.

The first verse begins there:

"Early in the morning, at the break of dawn,

The earth was shaking, and the stone was gone.

Mary went to weep, but she found the grave was bare,

Jesus spoke to her, saying, 'Mary, why are you crying there?'"

The Gospel accounts describe that morning from slightly different perspectives, and I pulled pieces of those accounts together to create the scene in the song.

Matthew 28:2 tells us: "There was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven… and rolled back the stone."

Then in John 20, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb while it is still dark and discovers that the stone has been removed.

She doesn't immediately understand what has happened.

That is one of the details of the resurrection story I have always found interesting.

We know how the story ends. Mary didn't.

We arrive at Easter morning already knowing Jesus has risen. Mary arrived expecting to find a stone blocking the path to a loved one.

Instead, she found an empty tomb.

John 20:15 records Jesus asking her: "Woman, why weepest thou?"

Then He says one word: "Mary."

And she knows Him.

I imagine there had to be a moment when everything changed.

Grief became disbelief. Disbelief became recognition. Recognition became joy.

That is exactly what I wanted the music to do.

The verses stay in that darker, more restrained place, and then the chorus breaks loose:

"He rolled the stone away,

Let His glory shine, let His glory shine.

He has risen, He lives,

Now the victory's mine, the victory's mine."

That jump was intentional.

I wanted the chorus to feel like the musical equivalent of throwing open the doors and letting sunlight pour into a dark room.

The tomb is empty. He is alive.

The angel's words in Matthew 28:5–6 say everything that needs to be said: "Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen."

Those may be some of the most important words in all of Scripture.

He is not here. He is risen.

Christianity ultimately stands on that claim.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:14: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain."

In other words, without the resurrection we don't simply lose an interesting part of the Easter story.

We lose the whole thing.

But Christ did rise.

And because He rose, the resurrection isn't only His victory.

That is why the chorus says: "Now the victory's mine."

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:55–57: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?… But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."

That's the victory I wanted the chorus to celebrate.

Jesus conquered death, and because we belong to Him, death no longer gets the final word over us either.

The chorus continues:

"He rolled the stone away,

Hear the angels sing, hear the angels sing.

He has conquered death, He lives,

He is Lord, the King."

There is a lot packed into the phrase "He has conquered death."

Death has always been the one enemy humanity could never defeat.

We can postpone it. We can fight it. We can use every bit of knowledge and medicine we possess to hold it back.

Eventually, though, death wins.

Then Jesus changed the rules.

Revelation 1:18 records Christ saying: "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore… and have the keys of hell and of death."

The grave that appeared to have defeated Him became the very place where His victory was revealed.

The second verse continues that announcement:

"Through the deafening silence, a mighty voice was heard,

'Do not be afraid, for I'm alive, I've kept My word.'

The tomb could not hold Him, no, the stone could not stay,

Jesus rose victorious on that glorious day."

The phrase "I've kept My word" is important because the resurrection wasn't an unexpected change in God's plan.

Jesus had told His disciples what was going to happen.

In Matthew 16:21, He explained that He would suffer, be killed, and "be raised again the third day."

They heard Him. They just didn't understand.

I can relate to that.

There are times when God has told us enough to trust Him, but circumstances make His promise difficult to see.

Good Friday didn't look like victory.

Saturday certainly didn't look like victory.

But God wasn't finished on Saturday.

That's something worth remembering when we find ourselves somewhere between what God promised and what we can presently see.

Sometimes we're living on Saturday.

The story isn't over yet.

Verse three moves from what happened to Jesus to what His resurrection means for us:

"Now we have hope, and our hearts will sing,

Praise be to Jesus, our eternal King.

Through His resurrection, we can now see,

Now we'll live forever, 'cause He has set us free."

This is where Easter becomes personal.

The resurrection isn't simply an event Christians remember.

It is the source of our hope.

1 Peter 1:3 calls it a "lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead."

Because He lives, our hope extends beyond whatever happens in this life.

Jesus says in John 11:25: "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

That's a remarkable promise.

The empty tomb means the cemetery isn't the end of the story.

That doesn't make losing someone easy. It doesn't mean grief disappears. Even Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus.

But for those who trust in Christ, grief and hope can exist in the same heart.

We mourn. But we don't mourn without hope.

The bridge brings the whole song to its declaration of victory:

"In the light of His love, we will rise again,

In His mighty name, there is no end.

Death has no power, the victory's won,

Jesus has risen, and we are one."

The line "Death has no power" points directly to Romans 6:9: "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him."

Death had its moment.

The tomb had its moment.

The stone had its moment.

But none of them could hold Jesus.

And because of Him, they won't hold us forever either.

There is another detail about the stone that I think is worth remembering.

Jesus didn't need the stone rolled away so He could get out.

The resurrected Christ later appeared in rooms behind closed doors. The stone wasn't moved because Jesus was trapped inside.

It was moved so everyone else could see that the tomb was empty.

Come and see.

That's what the angel tells the women in Matthew 28:6: "Come, see the place where the Lord lay."

The open tomb became evidence of what God had done.

The stone that was supposed to seal Jesus in became part of the testimony that He was gone.

I love that picture.

Something meant to declare, This is finished, became a doorway proclaiming: This has only begun.

There is one other part of the story of "He Rolled The Stone Away" that has always amused and surprised me.

Of all the songs I have released, this one has consistently been one of my strongest-performing songs on streaming services overseas.

I have no explanation for that.

Maybe it is the melody. Maybe it is the energy of the chorus. Maybe people simply connect with the resurrection message no matter what country they live in. My daughter said it was because the chickens lay more eggs when it is played. Family always has a way of keeping you grounded.

Whatever the reason, I like the thought that a song I wrote as our little church community was coming back together after COVID somehow found its way into headphones and speakers thousands of miles away.

There is something appropriate about that too.

The resurrection was never supposed to remain a local story.

Jesus told His disciples in Acts 1:8 that they would be His witnesses "unto the uttermost part of the earth."

Two thousand years later, the message is still traveling.

Different countries. Different languages. Different churches. Different kinds of music.

Same message.

He is risen.

That is what I wanted this song to do from the beginning.

Start in the darkness.

Stand for a moment outside the tomb.

Feel the grief and uncertainty of that early morning.

Then roll away the stone.

Let the music open up.

Let the voices rise.

Let the church sing like people who actually believe what we're singing.

Because Easter isn't supposed to sound like a funeral.

The grave is empty.

Death has been defeated.

Christ is alive.

And sometimes the most appropriate theological response is also the simplest:

Turn it up and sing.

He rolled the stone away.

He has risen.

He lives.

He is Lord—the King.

"Buc-ee's" didn't come from a place of praise, nostalgia, heartbreak, or hope for new beginnings like so many of my other songs.

It came from a place of pure amazement.

I had been to Buc-ee's several times before, but on this particular trip with my wife, apparently my brain was operating in a different gear. I had been writing a lot of songs, and when you spend enough time in that headspace, almost anything can become a song.

Apparently, even a gas station.

We were traveling to my sister's house in South Texas and stopped at a Buc-ee's somewhere south of Dallas. I had seen the brisket, Beaver Nuggets, taffy, souvenirs, clothes, grills, home decorations, and just about everything else imaginable before. But this time I walked out thinking, Somebody needs to write a song about this place.

Unfortunately for everyone around me, that somebody was apparently me.

We still had about three hours to drive before reaching my sister's house, and for almost the entire trip, lyrics and ideas were bouncing around in my head.

Brisket.

Beaver Nuggets.

Taffy.

Those enormous, ridiculously clean bathrooms.

And aisle after aisle of stuff I didn't know I needed until a big beaver informed me that I did.

By the time we arrived at my sister's, much of the song was already taking shape in my head. That afternoon, while my sister and my wife sat inside probably discussing what a dork I was, I sat out on the patio with my laptop trying to get all those words out of my brain and onto the page.

I can't really help it. Once an idea gets loose in my head, I have to chase it until it leaves me alone.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us, "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven."

Apparently, there is also a time to write a song about Buc-ee's.

By the second day, I had it finished.

Well... mostly.

The first version was about six minutes long because I attempted to list far too many of the thousands of things you can buy there. I quickly discovered that describing the entire inventory of Buc-ee's is less like writing a song and more like reading a department-store catalog to music.

Something had to go.

The problem was deciding what.

The brisket obviously had to stay.

Beaver Nuggets weren't negotiable.

Neither was the taffy.

And you can't possibly write a truthful song about Buc-ee's without mentioning those giant, famously clean bathrooms.

So I started cutting until the song became something a normal human being might actually listen to from beginning to end.

There is another little bit of Scripture that seems strangely appropriate: "Let all things be done decently and in order" (1 Corinthians 14:40).

Anyone who has ever watched the organized chaos of a packed Buc-ee's on a Saturday afternoon might question whether that verse applies—but somehow the place seems to make it work.

I never really planned to release "Buc-ee's," and it will not be distributed to the streaming services. It was simply one of those songs that demanded to be written because my brain apparently wasn't going to give me any peace until I did.

But after letting a few people hear it, they kept asking where they could find it.

So, by popular demand, I finally put it here on the website.

There isn't a deep spiritual lesson hiding in this one.

Sometimes a song is simply supposed to make you smile.

And if you've ever walked into Buc-ee's intending to buy gasoline and walked back out forty-five minutes later carrying brisket, Beaver Nuggets, a bag of taffy, a T-shirt, and something for your house you didn't know existed an hour earlier...

you already understand the song.

I hope you get a chuckle out of it.