S is for SONGS

It all began with 'Blowin in the Wind' when I was about thirteen or fourteen. I'd been experimenting with the chords for some time and though I can't say that I knew much more than the first verse of the song, I did have a solid grasp of the tune. So without any further ado, I sat down in the old armchair in the kitchen and wrote some new lyrics, with a Christian slant of course. I called it, 'Give you life to Him.' It was brilliant and I managed to cram in more cliches per line than the average old time preacher puts in his whole sermon. I was so enthused by my creation that I even persuaded my sister to sing it in public while I strummed along and crooned a few notes of harmony. Mr. Dylan would not have been impressed with this abuse of his tune but, hey, 'how many ears can one man have?' I was now on a run and there followed a series of lyrics from the same pen to such lovelies as Edelweiss,Island of Dreams, I'll never find another you, The Last thing on my Mind, Streets of London and even a couple of Big Tom numbers. I also paid homage to Johnny Cash, Rick Nelson and Slade in my repertoire as the words just kept coming, until one day, having exhausted the cliche dictionary, I sat back and had a cold hard look at my work. To be honest, they all had more than a touch of 'My Lovely Horse' about them and I feel my face beginning to burn even as I write this, for my early attempts at songwriting would have made an ample meal for a shredder.

Yet it taught me a valuable lesson. Never be afraid to criticise your own work if it helps to make it better. I was too young to do that at the time and while I'm proud that I made an effort, retrospect is a wonderful tool. I learnt from those days and I also learnt from others. I once worked with a songwriter who never seemed to discard anything they wrote, neither melody or lyric. As a result, many of the songs that should never have seen the light of day, made their way into public view with the expected drastic consequences. Maybe I should have been more honest at times but all the while I was learning my own game and songwriters selfishly guard their creations and their knowledge, especially the mistakes of others. I learned very quickly to bin tunes with monotonous regularity unless they still produced a spark in me some weeks after I had created them. Likewise, the more I wrote, the more I saw the flaws in my previous writing and I have pages of draft lyrics that just never really fitted the song.

I began to write in more and more different ways, sometimes at the piano, acoustic guitar, or at a synth, often just with an electric guitar and drum machine, even occasionally with only a bass guitar. It was usually a matter of just singing a tune to a chord sequence, recording it and repeating the process. On a good night, I might come up with fifteen or twenty tunes that I would then listen to in the car, but by the end only one might make it past to the lyric stage and sometimes none at all. And so it was back to the drawing board and the whole process started again. Yet the greatest influence on all my songwriting attempts was God, for He was my inspiration and the reason I write at all. And it's not strange that the songs that I lave felt most happy about, are the ones that only took a few minutes to write, because God was in it and He had something to say beyond my own thoughts. You see, I'm not a preacher and there are those who are better at talking to strangers, one to one. Others are great organisers, many make excellent Sunday School teachers, some show great compassion and bring comfort to the sick and elderly and some are just suited to the many practical and administrative roles that church life offers. While I can do all of those things, there are so many who are so much better than I am but I can express my worship of God and His salvation in a song or poem so I guess that's my role. Yet isn't that the whole point of the body of believers that we call the church. God has given us all different gifts and in using them we not only encourage each other but we help His church to grow.

We are not all teachers, preachers, healers, administrators or even songwriters but we all have our own job to do for him and as Paul reminds us, 'there are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit.' So lets do our work for His kingdom in the right spirit and if you haven't even started out on the road yet, in the words of that immortal first song, 'the answer my friend is Give Your life to Him.'