23 - Week 2 - "Shepherd Of My Soul" (or, The Preferred Method Of Choosing Songs for Sunday - Let God Do It!)

"Hey Tim, I see you're back leading the music team again at Meadow. I have something to send you." These were the words in an email I received a couple months ago from Carla Olson. Carla and Mark were members of Meadow for several years before moving to Savannah, Georgia. While they attended Meadow Carla had been on the music team and Mark had been a member of our awesome set up and tear down team.

A couple weeks later I got a call from my wife, "What in the world is in this huge box Carla sent you?" We opened it up and found a complete library of CD's and songbooks that she had been collecting of praise and worship music. For a worship leader a gift like that is like hitting the mother lode!

I had no idea where to start so I picked out a CD from random that I had never heard before and before long ran across a song that I instantly hit the "repeat" button so the CD player would play it over and over.

The song was called "Shepherd Of My Soul" from Vineyard music. It was obviously based on Psalm 23, but I had never heard this particular song before but it immediately grabbed me with its simple melodic hook and poetic lyrics.

That week I met with John and Dave as we often do to discuss upcoming message series and themes. John brought up the fact that he would be designing a series surrounding books of the Bible whose 23rd chapter focused on dealing with trouble and dark times. He mentioned that one of the Sundays would be devoted to Psalm 23.

I was like, "Hey, I just happen to have a perfect song for that Sunday, and it just kind of fell into my lap this week." Sometimes it's a struggle to find that "just right" song. Sometimes God just drops it into your lap - I love those times! What are the chances that Carla would think to send me a gift of a 'ton of music', that I would pick the one CD out of all she sent that would have a song that particularly caught my ear, and that I would find out later that same week that it would be a perfect fit for an upcoming series I knew nothing about until that point. Call it a fluke, a chance happening, I call it God dropping it into my lap.

Thanks Carla for the CD's and songbooks!