Lord, Have Mercy

Quite by accident, I stumbled upon this tonight.

I was replaying the portion of Handel's Messiah from today's Advent devotional segment this evening.  It's the trio from Young Messiah (1994) of Larnelle Harris, Steve Green and Michael English singing Surely, He Hath Borne our Sins.  I could listen to it over and over.  We started watching a few more Young Messiah pieces from the same concert recording.  I used to listen to it many times over in my late teens and early twenties.

And then James and I noticed that in the line up there was a video from Moody Church Media.  Well, we certainly had to look at what that was.  And this resulted in a little walk down memory lane, accompanied by this perfectly gorgeous piece that I'd never heard of before.  The soloist is a man that studied at Moody with me, but I think graduated a couple years after me.  The conductor is the iconic Gerald Edmonds, one of my teachers at Moody, music director at Moody church for 27 years, and the man who along with David Davis, I credit with teaching me how to conduct.

15 years ago, this was our church home for the duration of our time in Chicago.  I walked across that stage, through those choir seats and up and down those aisles more times than I can count.  I conducted children's choirs and even the adult choir once from that stage, I directed the children's christmas pageant from those steps, and I scurried through the back passageways behind those rounded-top doors with a headset on each year during Candlelight Carols, helping to get the Nativity actors out on their cue.  Behind the left door (stage right) and up a wee hallway was the recording room that I could always find James in....if he wasn't up at the top of the balcony at the live soundboard of this massive, 4000 seat church in downtown Chicago.  It had a children's program so large that I would 'make my rounds' each Sunday morning to provide music for each class, of each department of the Sunday School.

Phew.  Didn't realize how much I missed all that until just now.  I've now listened to about 5 versions by other churches or choirs and Moody's is by far the most beautiful and sensitive. Give this a listen, mom.  I guarantee you'll like it.