The melody of this piece was inspired by the tenor line of Stephen Paulus’s Pilgrim’s Hymn, which I once sang in my high school choir. The entire piece is gorgeous, but I really admired the tenor line, as well as the emotional lyrics. Again, I heard a piece and wanted to write something like it. It wasn’t until my mission that I got the idea to carry through with this particular idea. I felt such a piece should be a prayer of gratitude because that is what such a prayer would sound like to me. When I had access to a piano, I tried out the melody, and slowly worked out the other three parts.
At the time, my missionary companion heard what I played and said he didn’t like it because the parts weren’t written very well. I thought it sounded lovely, especially since it had taken me a while to come up with what I had. Looking at it now, I can certainly see a few flaws in my writing, most notably the fact that I had the sopranos singing awfully high at one point. Perhaps it would be much better to bring them down an octave there (this is reflected in the recording).
Notwithstanding my novice composition skills, I felt this piece to be a small but sincere expression of my gratitude to God for His love and mercy for me and for all of His children. I imagined this to be the very first piece of my musical based on The Book of Mormon, leading straight into 1 Nephi 1:1, which I also set to music, even though I only wrote the melody and didn’t develop it further.
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