A Spirit Led Song

© 1999 Don Rogers

As the new youth minister with great hopes for bringing a deeper spirituality into the nurture of the young people I found discouragement.

This new staff position and my interests were not greeted warmly by youth or their parents. They wanted to know why they weren't having fun times and recreation times and party times like they used to have Sunday evenings.

I reached a crisis point in my sense of ministry and spent a good deal of time praying to God about my failure. I came to this particular Sunday with no idea of what to do. I prayed and despaired. The program began about 6:00. About 5:45 I had an unclear but strong motivation to prepare some slips of paper and to place a candle and offering plate in our chapel in front of a scene of Christ with outstretched arms.

When the group had gathered I was conscious with new clarity that the major event of the week had been the terrible news of the explosion of the Challenger Space Shuttle. I told the teenagers I had no program but wanted to enact a dramatic response to the shuttle tragedy. I acted then as a brother of one who had been on the shuttle and confronted God with my tears and anger and how tired I was of going to church if this is what it meant - to have a loved one die.

I continued on to voice that I was also aware that at times I would meet God most powerfully in the midst of suffering.

The youth were moved to quietness. Then I knew what the slips of paper were for, and that arrangement I had made in the chapel. I invited them, if they wanted, to write on a slip of paper their own private suffering and concerns and present it to God by putting it in that offering plate.

They did that. All of them did that. We waited patiently in silence for each one to do that. Then one asked, "What do we do now?" I had no idea why I answered, "Now we going to write a song." None of them seemed ready to start so I said, "I thank you Lord." A girl added, "for all the things you've done for me" Another girl added, " You are my sword and shield." A boy added, "You are my eternity." And so it continued with phrases added spontaneously.

I thank you Lord
You are my holy light
The light that shines on me
Within my darkest night

So now may I go
With your light inside of me
Now may your love flow
Through every part of me

I thank you Lord
For giving up your life for me
I give up my life to you
So that others may see

I give up all my life to you
In your love I'll always be.

Then they said, "Sing it to us, sing it to us"

I didn't know where the melody was going to come from but by then, since so much had already happened that seem miraculous, I sang their song. The following Sunday they sang their song in the worship service and it has been their song ever since.