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New Music: My Heavenly Father Watches Over Me

Mar 25, 2020

Sometime around the first of the year, a nice person requested an arrangement of an old standard–“My Father Watches Over Me,” with words by William C. Martin and music by Charles Gabriel.

It intrigued me, because 1) I hadn’t heard it before; and 2) Charles Gabriel wrote the music for “I Stand All Amazed,” which I love.

Well, the original (which you can listen to here or here) was a bit dated for my liking. (Yeah, those videos are dated too, but you get the idea.) So I failed utterly in answering the request by writing my own melody.

Because the words caught me, simple as they are, (the title does sound a bit like a children’s song, doesn’t it?) I uncharacteristically set aside what I was working on and did this one instead. 

I was really enjoying myself as the melody took shape, and I thought, “I’ve got this.”

Then, in February, my dad died. It seemed apparent then why the words had taken such hold of me. I was grateful that Heavenly Father had nudged me to have it ready to share with my mother.

I thought I understood the Lord’s purpose. I really did. It was another “I’ve-got-this” moment.

And then this pandemic thing came along, and blew us all out of the water.

If you’re like me, you really want to be able to look at a given situation and think, “I’ve got this.” We want to be in control of things. We want to be the captain of our own ship, the ruler of our own destiny.

So often it doesn’t work that way. And that’s a good thing because the Captain of our ship is smarter than the rest of us.

Russell M. Nelson, who is president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, posted a recent message saying, in part,

“…our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ know us, love us, and are watching over us. Of that we can be certain.”

At this particular time, in every corner of our world, we need to know that we have a Heavenly Father who watches over us all. That’s the message of this simple text.

Here’s a recording with vocals by James Loynes:

I hope you’re all safe.
I hope you’re all well.
It’s likely that some of you aren’t.

I hope more than anything that you believe in an all-powerful Heavenly Father who really does love you. He knows your needs. He watches over you. And he does what’s best for you.

He’s got this, even when we don’t. 

One final note: Moving a song up or down gracefully isn’t as easy as it sounds. It just doesn’t always work well. This one worked in these keys. I really couldn’t move it further either way without some serious re-writing. So “high” and “low” are relative. 🙂

Have fun singing at your own, socially-distanced-sheltering-at-home piano. Or sing along with the track. Better yet, YouTube it and post a link below so I can hear you too. 🙂

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