This Sunday we are premiering a new hymn! Let me tell you a little about how it came to be.

Please allow me to begin with a story about some women you know. It isn't my story, not really anyway-I'm just a side character, so my apologies for any details that aren't quite historically accurate.

Some 22 years ago Deb Loftis, Wanda Fennell, and Betty Pugh attended a Baptist Women in Ministry event at Eagle Eyrie. There, they met a Southern Baptist college student from northern Virginia named Kim Chenoweth, who, like many Southern Baptist girls, was trying to discern a call to ministry.

Deb invited Kim to visit the Baptist Seminary in Richmond, and Kim signed up for a campus visit. While in Richmond, Kim reached out to a friend from high school who was at VCU (if you haven't figured it out by now, that friend is me). They went to see The Incredibles at the Byrd Theater. It wasn't a date. It was a date.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

A few decades later, I was rocking sleepless 9-month old David, the third child who can trace their existence back to the seed planted in that encounter at Eagle Eyrie. Sometimes, in those long nights, I read hymn texts and use them to improvise lullaby melodies. Sometimes I like them enough to record them on my phone. Sometimes I like one of those enough to write down. And sometimes, I get time to flesh them out, put together a potential accompaniment, and they become a piece of music.

This is one of those rare times when all the sometimes line up, and seed comes to fruition.

Hannah Brown, who I've mentioned before in this blog, is a favorite current generation hymn writer. Her meditation on the Parable of the Sower was the source of one of those lullabies. Once I took the time to give that melody a little water, I realized how much it reminded me of my friend and mentor, herself a master gardener and teacher, Deb Loftis. It became an obvious choice who to name the tune for.

We will sing this hymn in worship on July 12th, as we prepare to read The Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13. May hymn text, tune, and scripture, illuminate each other and help us to hear what the Spirit is singing to the church. Thanks be to God.

PS, if you want to hear that original recording, I found it on my phone and uploaded it here:

“The Seeds of Grace”

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