O Rest in the Lord
By Ken Medema
What’s this?
It’s a section of this Substack containing an archive of videos of my choir’s anthems, along with my comments. I expect this to be the final post, as explained below. A longer description can be found on the About page.
O Rest in the Lord
From the publisher’s page:
Based on Psalm 37 and composed by Ken Medema. Pastoral feeling with classical overtones. Sensitively set with warmth in both the voices and accompaniment. Moderately easy SATB voicing, especially appropriate as a choral response after prayer.
This piece was a “quick learn” for our choir. I am a little surprised, however, at the statement above about “moderately easy SATB voicing“. It’s not a difficult piece, unless you have little time to learn it before singing it. We had little time, and quite a few choir members were not able to attend the the final weeknight rehearsal for it, which made for an “interesting” pre-service run-through. The difficulties were similar to those we encountered last week. We did however have our six altos (my section) when it came time to sing, and the six of us came through clearly in the recording.
I like the way this anthem turned out well enough to include it as my final offering here (more below). Like last week’s anthem, we goofed in a place or two, but I still hear it playing in my head, and it is welcome to keep on doing that, goof free.
Behind the Scenes
I don’t expect to be posting more anthems after this one. This was our last Sunday before the choir breaks until September, and I do not plan to continue with them when they resume. I will be 75 by then—hard to believe—and, as I wrote about last week, this has to do one way or another with multiple health issues. Otherwise I’d continue ‘till I dropped.
This is my third attempt at retiring from choir. The first was following Easter, 2017 at another church, and that lasted a year and a half. The second was when my choir at yet another former church disbanded in 2020, in compliance with “the authorities”. That lasted only 10 months until at my present church I could no longer stand to sit there listening instead of being up there singing.
I’m pretty sure this time it’s for real. I do plan to continue in my other volunteer activities, and to maintain my singing voice, such as it is. I am going to greatly miss singing in the choir, but right now I am feeling relief and release from the stress of a difficult-to-sustain weekly routine.
I hope these anthems have held meaning for those of you who have been dropping by here from week to week. Thank you.
Recorded at Christ Community Church, Carmichael, California, May 18, 2025.
Excerpted from this livestream.