“The Lord Is my Rock” Wednesday, 10/20/2021
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While I was working on my master’s thesis (circa 1989) I went through a fairly difficult time. When I was worrying about the future, especially dating and marriage, but occasionally work or career, I would begin meditating on Psalm 18:2. A sense of peace and rest would envelope my whole being, an assurance that I could fully rely on God and His care. As always with this kind of meditation, the rhythm of the spoken words would suggest a meter and tempo and over time, the natural rise and fall of the vocal inflection would suggest melody and then harmony until the first version of “The Lord Is my Rock” was complete. It was complete, only in the sense that I was uncertain where to go from there. My thought at the time was that the surrounding scriptures, at least verse 1 and verses 3-6 should supply fertile soil for extending the work, but my compositional skill set had not yet developed that far.
I was attending church at Abundant Life Assembly of God in The Woodlands. A great number of my friends from Sam Houston State were attending services there and were involved in both the professional and lay ministry of that congregation. Orlando Juarez was the music minister who had had some commercial success in the CCM market with his group, Sojourner. He decided that Abundant Life should gather original songs from the rich supply of creatives we had in attendance and use the recording of our music as a way to promote the church and to reach out to the surrounding community.
When Orlando asked for submissions, I provided “The Lord Is my Rock” along with another song, I think it was called “Come Unto Me.” I was particularly concerned that “The Lord Is my Rock” was so brief, but that did not bother Orlando. He asked permission to alter the piece and I was very glad for the opportunity to collaborate. I thought he would extend the song to include some of the surrounding scriptures, but to my surprise he did not. He used a more contemporary wording of Psalm 18:2 and reset the tempo, feel and mood from that of a march to that of Latin or jazz. This worked nicely as one of a series of short praise and worship songs performed back-to-back. The album was produced at Carey Wise’s 4th Creation Studio in Conroe and was distributed by the church to the surrounding homes in The Woodlands on cassettes. Orlando, also, submitted the 4th Creation Studio version of “The Lord Is my Rock” to Hosanna Integrity where it was held on reserve for a period of time, but as far as I know, was never produced or distributed by them.
On a more personal note, prior to us meeting, my wife, Christy, was given one of these cassettes by her college room-mate. In January 1992, I revisited the prayer meeting I had been a part of while working on my master's degree. Afterwards, many of us went to a friend’s house and I began playing “The Lord Is my Rock.” To my surprise, though no one else had heard of this song, this young lady I had never met began singing the song with me. She and I were married in November 1992. The song that God had provided to me for comfort regarding dating and marriage is the same song that provided the first connection to my wife (pretty cool).
After the Abundant Life album project, like so many of the pieces on project one, this one sat on the shelf until I decided around 2016-2017 to rework it/finish it and record it for project one. Almost, thirty years later the ideas finally developed for Psalm 18:1 and Psalm 18:3-6. I decided to stick with the original march style of the second verse and to maintain the King James styling for the lyrics, taking it back in the original direction, not to diminish Orlando’s work in any respect. I am very comfortable with the notion of multiple versions of the same basic material and will always be grateful to Orlando and to all the others who took the time and energy to include this as part of the church’s outreach to the local community.