Nights Are Long - Music Story

Dad was a miller by trade. The company he worked for made restaurant quality food mixes. My favorite was wild rice pancake mix. After years of inhaling flour and other dry baking ingredients, he developed COPD. There were times when he couldn’t sleep unless he was sitting up. He sent me a poem he wrote about his love/hate relationship with his lazy boy chair. I set the poem to music, below.

Despite COPD, Dad was grateful. This is in his own handwriting.

For those of you who have trouble deciphering a lefty’s script, this is what he wrote:

Well it has been fun to go back into the past. Perhaps one could be proud of one’s ancestors, but I am much more grateful that through faith in Christ I have been born into the family of God. John 1:12 “But as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” My prayer is that this might be real in the lives of all who read this. Merry Christmas – 1977 Dwayne

From the album “This and That” this video is scrolling playback of the Dad’s lazy-boy-chair lament.

Kathy

Click here to read John 1:12, the verse Dad quoted.

Print (PDF) and/or digital (MusicXML) sheet music is available for Nights Are Long.

Click here for PDF.

Click here for MusicXML.
(MusicXML™ is the standard open format for sharing digital sheet music. Check the help files in your music notation app for directions on importing MusicXML files.) 

The Song of Moses – Music Story

The Song of Moses, sometimes called The Song of the Sea, is the first song in the Bible. It was written at the time of the Exodus, around 1400 BC. Here it is beautifully formatted on three different Torah scrolls, each one hand-copied from a previous copy of the Torah. Notice, the scrolls are dated centuries apart, yet are formatted identically. The formatting symbolizes columns of water on either side of the children of Israel as they walked on dry land through the Red Sea.[i]

I have been privileged to see several Torah scrolls and marvel at the beauty of the penmanship, the careful attention to detail, the amazing accuracy of each copy.

From the album “The HymnBook – Thirty-four Hundred Years of Praise” this video is scrolling playback of the song.

Kathy

Click here to read The Song of Moses.

You can get print (PDF) sheet music for The Song of Moses.

Click here for print sheet music.

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[i] 📜 שירת הים | Shirat haYam :: the Song of the Sea (Exodus 15:1-19) • the Open Siddur Project ✍ פְּרוֺיֶקְט הַסִּדּוּר הַפָּתוּחַ