guitars and vocals: T.S. Taylor

note:
Here in this room where I now type out these words, I have an acoustic guitar within easy reach on which, at any given moment, I can search for interesting chord structures and melodies. A pen and a notebook rests on my desk, the notebook’s pages filled with notes, doodles, possible song titles, and fragments of lyrics which may see the light of day in a song I will write sometime soon or maybe next month, or next year or perhaps two or three years from now. On the other hand, there’s a chance that many of these fragments will remain right where they are; orphaned children, sized up, found wanting, and sadly left unadopted. Though I do revisit them occasionally and would love to bring them home, they continue to appear resistant, perhaps obstinately opposed, to the move.
Paper, pen, guitar, lyric sketches: the tools necessary for this carpenter to frame his house of song are all here and, at this point in time, building a sound structure has become second nature to me: verse, chorus, and bridge (allowing room for some variation and experimentation), but then there is the question of the specific structural style of my house as well as the particulars concerning its interior furnishings. For this I will need to consult the designer/interior decorator, who some songwriters refer to as “inspiration” or “The Muse,” or, (as some in Christian circles believe), God himself, (a rather dicy claim since, over the last several decades, the All-Mighty has been receiving undue credit for a good number of truly wretched songs). Be that as it may, at some point (continuing with my house building analogy), I place a call to the designer, and knowing he’s a very busy man who seldom picks up immediately, I leave him a voicemail asking him politely if he wouldn’t mind paying me a visit on the job site and lending me a hand in completing the work. The situation is complicated by the fact that this particular designer is notoriously unpredictable; sometimes he shows up on the job almost immediately and at other times he doesn’t show up for days on end. In my case, patience always pays off; I’ve never known him to be absent for very long.
So, now that I’ve written the song, what next? I record a demo of it, put it up here on Patreon, and from there it sometimes becomes a candidate for a cut on a future record. Through this largely mechanical process, the song then goes out into the world and it is at this point that a truly remarkable thing happens; some might say not merely remarkable but mysterious and, in many ways, miraculous. The song becomes a kind of living, benevolent entity vested with the power to perform all sorts of wondrous feats: inspire faith, courage, conviction, and passion. It may bring solace to the grieving, sanctuary to the displaced and the disenfranchised, laughter to the glum, inspiration to the uninspired, healing to the wounded, humility to the proud, hope to the hopeless; the list goes on. All this, I sincerely believe, is somewhat tangential to the fact that I happen to have been the one who wrote the song; the wind of God’s spirit blows where it will, it’s wildly unpredictable impact on another’s life having very little to do with me. Whatever gifts or talents I possess have been granted to me in the first place by a generous Creator.
I could write a lengthy book recounting the stories of all those who have written me or talked to me after a concert telling me how certain songs have influenced their lives in some dramatic, life-changing way, like the people who have found solace and a reason for hope in a song such as ‘Sanctuary’ or ‘Blessing In Disguise.’ One of my favorite stories is that of the fear-laden man who shared with me how he had recently found the courage to go on a missionary trip after coincidently overhearing ‘Moses In The Desert’ on the radio while he was taking a shower. Here is what he heard:
I said “Who are you to send me?”
He (God) said “I Am that I Am”
I said “What will I tell them?”
He said “I Am that I Am”
“But, dear Lord, I just can’t do it,
I am just a man”
He said “I will see you through it,
I Am that I Am”
This occurred at the exact moment this guy had made up his mind to bow out of the trip and was frantically searching for a credible excuse to tell his sponsor, which he intended to do immediately after taking his shower.
Then there is the story of an older man, an alcoholic for more than half of his life, who became a Christian, got sober, and continued to faithfully witness to his drinking buddies up until the Lord took him home several years later; he’d been moved to sobriety and faith in Christ through the Lost Dogs' song “Wall Of Heaven.” No doubt, upon his arrival in glory, he found his name written on that wall.
One rock thrown into a still pond creates countless ripples flowing outwardly from the point of impact. How many others did the former drunk himself inspire, and they, in turn, inspire still more, and so forth and so on. We won’t likely know until our arrival in the heavenly places where we will no longer see through a glass darkly. We can, however, be assured in the here and now that, as Jesus said, a tiny mustard seed can become a great tree in which the birds of the air find sanctuary. The smallest acts, (or seeds), of kindness, mercy, repentance, forgiveness, sacrifice, and so forth, give rise to the seedling which will then go on to become the magnificent, firmly rooted tree also known as the Kingdom God, in which all people are invited by our Lord to find refuge among its branches. Some little mustard seed of a song written in a small bedroom by a relatively unknown songwriter, having started out as a couple of chords, a tentatively sung melody, and a few lyrical fragments, is miraculously transformed into a vessel of grace through which a middle-aged drunkard decides he’d rather get drunk, not on spirits, but on the Holy Spirit, and a fearfully reluctant missionary finds the courage to step out of the warmth and safety of his shower and his familiar environment into the wild, unpredictable jungles of a strange and foreign land where he becomes a light bearer to those lost in darkness. Who knows, including themselves, the number of lives these men impacted? In small things lies the potential for great things.
We all have our measure of faith and we must do our best to exercise it accordingly, neither selling ourselves short, nor assuming we are called to do “great things” as they are often defined by a broken culture’s standards. Together we are called “the body of Christ” and in this body one individual member may lack what another member makes up for, and knowing this, we must strive to be content in doing our part, whether great or small. Though we who are in Christ are dressed in “rags of light,” it is God’s desire to use us for his restorative purposes and, in spite of ourselves, he calls us to be a source of healing in a wounded and broken world. The “great things” we are individually called to do may be as simple as offering a kind word to a downcast stranger, food and drink to a homeless person, solidarity with the powerless and the oppressed. Perhaps it is visiting the elderly and those in prison, and/or working in a homeless kitchen or food bank. You get the picture. None of these things are glamorous or “sexy:” the world won’t fall over itself in order to give us credit and sing our praises, but our small acts of faith-fueled charity may lead to more such acts on the part of others, and who knows how far this will go. These good works may increase a hundred fold without our ever knowing it until we go on to our reward. It is the temporal hiddenness of the height, width, and depth of our little acts of obedience which produces a Christ-conforming attribute we perhaps are in most need of today: humility.
God also knows the times we have hurt, the times we have suffered, the times in which we almost lost hope yet we hung on, trusting that despite the cross we bear, his promise to never leave us or forsake us was and is as good as gold. He knows the times we’ve struggled not to doubt his tender loving care for us, especially when all hell has broken loose in our lives and even the very thought of praying fills us with a sense of utter futility. We prayed anyway because we know that he is pleased by his children when they push through, despite the seemingly insurmountable obstacles in their way, and that the answer to our prayer, (whether “yes” or “no”), may be somewhat superfluous to the act of prayer itself; we pray because a personal loving God tells us to pray and, among other reasons, He happens to delight in hearing from his children.
We may be a pauper, not a king, a plumber, not a movie star, poor not rich, a stay at home mom as opposed to a corporate executive, a lay person and not a learned man of the cloth, an average joe as opposed to a man or woman of wealth, prestige, and power, and yet, whatever our station or calling in life is, we are all capable, through the power of Christ, of doing small, great things….seemingly insignificant acts of faith which we will learn one day have indeed reverberated through the corridors of eternity to the glory and honor of our redeemer.