Saturday, February 8, 2014

Oh Lord you spoke

1. Oh Lord you spoke
and light shone in the darkness.
The world took form:
the earth and sky and sea.
Creation born
in life and love and beauty.
Oh mighty word, speak today to me!

2. Oh Lord you spoke
a herald of salvation.
From shore to shore
your people heard your plea
and left all things
that they might turn and follow.
Oh mighty word, speak today to me!

3. O Lord you spoke.
Your word brought hope and healing.
The lame could walk
and blinded eyes could see.
At your command
the grave released its captives!
Oh mighty word, speak today to me!

4. O Lord you spoke.
Your word, a blade within us,
revealing hearts
in sin that ever stray.
Proclaiming hope,
your righteousness and mercy.
Oh mighty word, speak to us today!

5. Oh Lord you speak
so give us ears to hear you!
Renew our minds
and drive our doubts away.
Breathe out your power
that we might know and serve you.
Oh mighty word, speak to us today!
Oh mighty word, speak to us today!


Don't think I've ever written a 5 verser before. Pretty sure this needs to lose at least one verse. Which one? 

5 comments:

  1. Live dangerously. Those lines aren't too long, you can afford the luxury of 5.

    Interesting shift in the final line from me to us. Got me thinking there, you have.

    (sorry about that phrasing - too much of Bert speaking in the episode of Doc Martin we just watched. Their honeymoon was genuinely worse than ours!)

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    1. Oh I watched that episode last night! Painful!

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  2. Depends on if the tune is any good!

    You could stick a bit more salvation in there. 2 Corinthians 4:6 is a great verse for considering the link between creation and redemption.

    Great work, Simone, enjoying reading all your new words.

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  3. I really like this (especially the line about creation being born) but I admit, the 'oh' in the title does bring the Getty's song immediately to mind..

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  4. It's good - I don't mind five verses especially when there's no chorus. If I had to lose one - well I'm tossing up. In the end, I think I'd lose verse 1 because it makes it a bit of a "song about everything" and dilutes the message of the other verses. The two that I think are NOT candidates are three and four, because that's the point at which the power of the word becomes real for me as a person - the hope of healing, the challenge to my sin. I really like verse 4 - "your word a blade within us". It could even be "into us", it really captures the pain of that revelation. I think you could lose "today" in the hook line and it would be more powerful and direct. The exclamation "oh" always strikes me as a wasted syllable, like a place marker because the writer needs a downbeat before "Lord" (I've been guilty many times). If you had to say a word there, what would it be? Perhaps a different one each line. You change from past to present tense at verse 4 but verse 1 is really the only one that requires past. I'm being picky - none of these things are serious, it'll be a lovely song when it's finished.

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