27 May 2009

On the Journey

                             Sharing the gift of God we are . . .

              Kyle Matthews introduced me to Beth Nielsen Chapman at the 2007 Festival of Preaching in Nashville. Beth is singer-songwriter living in the Music City. She has written songs for Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Bette Milder, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Trisha Yearwood, Martina McBride, Michael McDonald, Faith Hill, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings. Her music has been heard on ER, Dawson’s Creek, Providence, Felicity, and in movie soundtracks, including The Prince of Egypt, Message in a Bottle, The Rookie, Where the Heart Is, and Practical Magic. Beth has released her own recordings of her songs, and she is quite popular in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

              During the festival this year, two of Beth’s friends, Darrell Scott and Adrienne Young, joined her. On Tuesday evening, they played and sang their songs. They attempted to replicate the format of the Bluebird Café in Nashville where songwriters sit and sing their songs while sharing with the audience the history of the music and the lyrics. The creative process they described enthralled me. From their description, it is truly a mysterious process. In describing her song writing process, Beth said that the vowels come to her first and then the consonants. I’m not sure what that means.

              Beth is a believer. She passionately speaks of her faith in God and of her journey of faith. She became a follower of Jesus in the Roman Catholic room of the Great Church. Darrell and Adrienne are also believers. They both grew up in the Baptist room of the Great Church. For all three of them, their faith informs and shapes their inspiration.

              Along with her success, Beth has experienced pain and suffering. Her husband lost his battle with cancer in 1994. Several years later, Beth faced her own battle with  breast cancer. Finally, about ten days before the festival this year, she had a benign brain tumor removed. Of course, there are all kinds of risks with brain surgery. After the surgery as she was waking up in recovery, the final line of a song she was writing came to her. Beth remarked that she said to herself, “Thank-you, Lord. I am still a songwriter.”

              On Wednesday evening, Beth, Darrell, and Adrienne sang their songs as a panel of four preaching professors listened. The professors were charged with identifying the spiritual themes they heard within the lyrics of the songs shared by the artists. As the evening began, I suspected that the professors would have little to say. The power of the songs we heard called us to absorb them in a silence filled with reverence.

              As the evening progressed, Beth decided to share the background to her song, Every December Sky. A couple of years ago she was in the studio making the final cuts on the recording that would include this song. As the session wrapped up, her doctor called to give her the results of a recent biopsy—stage 2-breast cancer. During the months of chemotherapy that followed, this song kept returning to her soul bringing comfort, peace, and encouragement.  Beth said that one day as her hair was finally beginning to come back she realized that God had given her this song for this very journey long before she knew that a battle with breast cancer lay around the corner. One line of the song says, “sometimes I have to trust what I can’t know.”

              The professors did not have much to say. An experience of God, like the one that absorbed all of us as Beth sang, defies any attempt to corral it with words. Yet, Beth’s song somehow spoke to my soul. The song reminded me of an encounter I had with God some months ago. I became aware that God is, in his own way, preparing us for tomorrow . . . today. We don’t recognize this work of grace. Yet, when a moment of crisis arrives, we become aware of strength and wisdom we did not know existed within us. God graciously prepared this gift for us before we needed it.

              Beth described how she gets letters almost daily from people across the world who hear her song, Every December Sky, and receive comfort, peace, and inspiration. Again, I was reminded that what we often believe is the most unique about us is also the most universal. I thought, too, of Paul’s words in II Corinthians: “Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” [1:3-4]

              After last week, I am even more convinced (though I don’t think I have ever doubted this) that all the gifts we receive from God are to be shared! Beth found consolation in the song God had given her. By sharing it with the world, others are receiving the very same gift of comfort. I stand in awe in the presence of God whose works are so mysterious. With humility, I bow before my heavenly Father who comforts me, so I may comfort another. Let us remember that we are all God’s gift to each other. Let us share the gifts we are!jamie