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Last Saturday night I was toss­ing around a cou­ple rhyming lines in my head before going to bed, and they just weren’t fit­ting cor­rectly. I got up Sunday morn­ing and headed to church, not really think­ing about what I had been work­ing on the night before. I was sit­ting in church, lis­ten­ing to the ser­mon, when sud­denly the lines just fell into place in my head. As I sat there, a sec­ond verse came to me, then a third. I real­ized it wasn’t going to stop, got up (we run a rather infor­mal ser­vice), stepped out to my car and found a note­book, and returned to my seat. Before I really real­ized it, I had a dozen or more verses in my note­book! I’m post­ing it here for oth­ers to read and enjoy…it’s not fully fin­ished, so com­ments and sug­ges­tions are wel­comed and appreciated!

Lord, show me Your way,
When I walk in the gray
Not in dark­ness, or in light
But the mists of my own sight.

Lord, how can I know
How to walk, and then to grow
In the fog, when I cry out
In the midst of fear and doubt.

Lord, I can­not stand,
Unless You’re with me in this land.
Lest then from Your path I stray
And be found out of Your way.

Lord, here in my storm,
Is lit­tle light and less of form.
Let me hear the blessed sound,
In track­less waste, of solid ground.

Lord, faith give to me,
That I may walk this stormy sea.
Let me trust now that Thy arm
Shall pro­tect me from all harm.

Lord, I can­not steer,
My own course, through storms of fear.
Without Your light I soon should fail;
My soul be swamped, unless you bail.

Lord, when I shall guide
My own steps, from this side.
Then I can­not help but sink
‘Neath the waves and o’er the brink.

Lord, I can­not see
What Your will would have of me.
Let me cry, lest I should fall
Thy Word be my all in all.

Lord, please clear mine eyes
Balance all, and let me prize
In my heart Thy Word aright
That I may safe come through this fight.

Lord, now help me fight
Long as I stand within Your light.
Yet when clouds shall cover me
Let not my thoughts stray far from Thee.

Solid truth shall set me free
Bring safe to har­bor, near to Thee
Let not me trust my dark­ened sight
Be thou, my Lord, my per­fect light.

This event got me to think­ing about the nature of cre­ativ­ity. I would hes­i­tate to use the word “inspired”, because that implies a lot of other things. But this was one of the stranger expe­ri­ences I’ve had with creativity…usually, I spend some time over a poem, con­struct­ing each verse and rhyme–rarely does any­thing of length come to me fully– (or mostly-) formed. Yet all our cre­ativ­ity stems from God, sub­cre­ation­ally, so should we be sur­prised when He takes dif­fer­ent paths with it?

Note: I don’t have a tune for this, and so if anyone’d like to tackle it, shoot me a mes­sage! I did notice while I was writ­ing this post that it fits fairly well with the tra­di­tional Celtic tune arranged by the Scottish band Runrig for “One Thing” on their The Stamping Grou