FOCUS: Applying recent insurrection to popular gospel song

(Editor’s note: While we seldom print verses, for fear of being overwhelmed by submissions, we thought Today’s Focus was particularly excellent, and timely, and hence, its publication today. –eeb.

Herndon

By Ashley Herndon

OCEANSIDE, Calif.  |  Here is the original version of the song, “I Come to the Garden Alone, by Charles Austin Miles (1868-1946), a prolific author of gospel songs.  Alongside it, is another version I penned  is what the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 percenters, and others gave us on January 6:

I Come to The Garden Alone
While the Dew Is Still On The Roses,
And The Voice I Hear Falling On My Ear
The Son Of God Discloses.
And He Walks with Me, And He Talks with Me,
And He Tells Me I Am His Own;
And the Joy We Share as We Tarry There,
None Other Has Ever Known.

He Speaks, and The Sound of His Voice
Is So Sweet the Birds Hush Their Singing,
And The Melody That He Gave To Me
Within My Heart Is Ringing.
And He Walks with Me, And He Talks with Me,
And He Tells Me I Am His Own;
And the Joy We Share As We Tarry There,
None Other Has Ever Known.
I’d Stay in The Garden With Him,
Though The Night Around Me Be Falling,
But He Bids Me Go; Through The Voice Of Woe
His Voice To Me Is Calling.

And He Walks with Me, And He Talks With Me,
And He Tells Me I Am His Own;
And The Joy We Share As We Tarry There,
None Other Has Ever Known.
I come to the riot well-armed; while the mobs are gathering behind me, And the demi-god voices I hear falling on my ear, are scalding and sadly horrifying.
Yet they scream at us all, while lying to us, and telling us ‘I love you’. It builds fear and hate as we tarry there, like no other this country has ever known. He lies to me and tries to trick us…Right into the jail.
He Speaks with a forked tongue, and the sound of his voice grates against the crucible of liberty. His family and cohorts exclaim, they prefer Barabbas to Love.
And he lies and claims he will walk with us, as he talks from both sides of his mouth. We March to the tune of hate and criminality. We share fear in the Ellipse, like none other we have ever known.
I would stay on the White House Lawn with him, though the laws are constantly broken. He bids me to go to the Temple of Liberty to create woe and death. His voice calls us to violence and mocks us in silence.
But he does not walk with us as promised, but hides cowering in the house of the people he razed. He bullies as the mob terrorizes, threatens, attacks and creaties horrors like none ever known.
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