In the Fall of 2018, I started meeting with a group of folks in Nagoya to spend time making music together and trying to write songs, based on Psalms. We shared a desire to see new music written for the Japanese church, but we also needed to start with what we could do. Since English was the most comfortable language for the majority of our group, we started writing in English and our first Psalm was Psalm 139.
The Psalm really resonated with our group, most of whom had crossed the water to be in Japan. Meditating on the Psalm together drew out our common struggles and shaped the text of the song.