A few years ago I went through a rough patch in life. Now that I think about it, it was quite a bit more than a few years ago. I’d lost my job and things in life weren’t as good as they’d been for my entire life up until that point. In between feeling sorry for myself for the “Job-like” time I was going through and looking for a new job, I spent a lot of time playing the piano. Over the course of a few days of questioning why I’d been singled out for this experience (I was basically a good guy; went to church and paid my tithes) and wondering why God let bad things happen to good people. Television news just seemed to be full of stories about wars; the wars that were happening and predicted to happen. There were stories about airplane crashes. There were stories about refugees. There were stories about earthquakes; stories about tsunamis, hurricanes and tornadoes.

It seemed like the only things on the news were stories about bad things. There wasn’t any good news. You guessed it. After a few days some notes, chords and words came to me and with a little work they all coalesced into a song about what I was feeling, and juxtaposing those feelings with the assurances we have in the Bible. It didn’t turn out a happy song, but it turned into a song that is about faith: having the faith to remember the promises He’s made in the times we can’t see the light at the end of that long, dark tunnel. And you should read the story of my song “Beside Me” to see what happened next….