Be still, for the presence of the Lord

Last Sunday, BBC1 rebroadcast Songs of Praise: the UK's Favourite Hymn, which was first shown in September last year.  They counted down and sang the top 10, and at number 9 was Be still, for the presence of the Lord.  The songwriter, David J Evans, spoke to introduce the hymn, and the soloist leading the singing was one of my favourite singers, Lesley Garrett.  So I decided that this would be the subject of my next post on this blog.

At St Mary, Halewood, where I was Vicar for 8 years, we sang the last verse of this hymn as our introit every Sunday, reminding us that the power of the Lord was present and at work among us as we gathered to worship him.  So it has a particular place in my heart for that reason.

On the programme, the presenter, Aled Jones, asked David Evans if he remembered the first time it was performed.  This was his response:

We had a big Christian conference coming up that my church is involved in, and I thought, "Maybe I might see if people want to sing it there."  So, I performed it to a group of musicians.  And I was just absolutely stunned by the response.  Half the group were kneeling and several were weeping gently.  And I thought, "Gosh, this is a bit scary."  Cos I'd never really experienced anything like that before.  It was then that I began to realise that maybe I'd written actually something that had a bit of power to it.  

Favourite Hymns: 2000 Years of Magnificat (Marjorie Reeves and Jenyth Worsley, Continuum, 2001, p 197) tells us that David Evans is a musician and a teacher.  He was involved in the early house church/charismatic movement in the 1970s, and wrote this song in 1985 in response to his feeling that

Like Jacob at Bethel (Genesis 28) . . . that we were asleep on holy ground . . . I felt that our contemporary worship had been largely oblivious to the awesomeness of God's presence within it.

I think that one reason this song is so popular is, as the Revd Ian Poulton points out in his blog,  that it 'is both profound and very simple'.  He comments further that 'the breadth of Biblical theology encompassed in this single song is vast'.  As well as the story of Jacob in Genesis 28, the song reflects the story of Moses at the burning bush, Jesus' Transfiguration, and the ascended Lord Jesus in Revelation, and many more.  'Be still' is a command which we hear in Psalm 37:7, Psalm 46:10 and Zechariah 2:13.  As we are still before the Lord, so he has a chance to be heard as he speaks to us.

The Songs of Praise programme is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK until Saturday 8 August.  The section on Be still, for the presence of the Lord begins just over seven minutes into the programme.

There is a lyric video here.