Week 3: Daar is niks

I wrote the chorus and bridge of this song back in April after 4 weeks of lockdown. I was inpired by the verse in Romans 8 that says that nothing can separate us from God’s love. It was one of those late night reflective moments that meant a lot to me personally and I played this chorus often through-out these times.

I had a rough idea for a verse, but it just did not work well. I love trying to paraphrase Scripture into song, but the challenge is always making the words sound personal and not like a sermon.

The melody of the verse was also a challenge since the chorus is actually set quite low. The normal formula of setting the verse lower than the chorus so that there is a climax to the music in the chorus did not quite work here. And I did play around with making the chorus melody higher, but then it lost some of the intimacy.

I finally found a verse that felt right to me in terms of lyrics and melody this weekend. I’m really excited to have written a song based on Romans 8, it’s such a powerful message and I’ve always wanted to put it to music.

Do you write songs based on scripture? How do you go about making the song personal?