Prayer. It all comes down to prayer.

I’ve noticed over the years that many of my songs are prayer songs. Maybe because music is the easiest way to express my emotions, and of all else, most of what I have to say is to God. In a world that tries to divide life into secular and sacred, I disagree with that temptation to divide, and agree with Wendell Berry, who said something to the affect of: “There is no secular and sacred, there is only sacred and de-sacred.” And I think it is the poets who live in the place of inviting people to see over (or rather through) the walls of secular/sacred in our lives and world, and invite us to breathe the sacred back into the de-sacred places. Music is the place for that to happen for me. Like the x-ray goggles that help me to see through the temporal – that creative space is my sanity, if not where hope abounds for me.

So, In This Hour, is a short prayer…with a lot of words. It’s a prayer for renewal and awakening.

I hope you enjoy it.

In This Hour
by Joel Bidderman

Verse 1:
Misty skies talking loud
& clouds reach for my hand
I don’t know where You’re going
But You take my hand
Take my heart and cleanse with fire
A furnace of Your love
Talk me off the cliff of fear
And draw me ever near

Oh Jesus You are everything to me

Verse 2:
Oh I’ll walk and then I’ll fall
Oh I’ll dance and then I’ll crawl
All the while Your grace is where I fall and stand
Reveal the depths and mysteries
Unfold the aches and the longings
That draw me closer to Your heart

Oh Prince of Peace You have captured me

Chorus:[the] Awakened sleeper is singing
This newborn mercy is breathing
As You rain down Your grace upon my face
Renew me even now
Oh fire and desire
Let my voice be fragrance to Your heart in this hour

Verse 3:
Ignite Your children to
The nations at every corner
Feet with beauty break
For the Lost and needy… & over
Every child, every beating heart
Every orphan, every lonely heart
Every widow, every broken heart
Every crying out for a new start

Bridge:
Let these prayers twist and turn
And linger, burn
And fall a fragrance to Your heart tonight
I’m losing myself in Your love for me
As the twilight calls the morning sun tonight

© 2006 Joel A. Bidderman/ASCAP