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Stanton Lanier

Scripture inspired piano to refresh your spirit

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Counting the Sand of the Sea

August 30, 2016 By Stanton Lanier 4 Comments

https://www.stantonlanier.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/5-Counting-the-Sand-of-the-Sea-60sec-Stanton-Lanier-c2016.mp3

Click above to listen to a portion of Counting the Sand of the Sea as you read. Visit climbtothesky.com for links to the new music video, CD, MP3 Album, Sheet Music, iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify.

What is your favorite seashore memory?

My 10th and newest album Climb to the Sky has two songs drawing inspiration from Psalm 139. The first is the title track, and the second is called Counting the Sand of the Sea, which came from verses 17-18…

“Your thoughts—how rare, how beautiful! God, I’ll never comprehend them! I couldn’t even begin to count them—any more than I could count the sand of the sea.” (The Message)

From 6th to 12th grade I lived in the Florida panhandle, about thirty minutes from Santa Rosa Island, part of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. The water is a beautiful blue green, and for many people, perhaps their favorite element. However, for me it is the sand — a glorious white color, with an extremely fine texture. There is just nothing like it between your toes.

The gulf island seashores are one of my favorites, but in 2015 a new seashore took first place, when I was able to see the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia. The combination of cliffs, sand, and sea creates breathtaking views, and stirs the heart with God’s beauty and wonder.

Great Ocean RoadHillsong United is a worship band based in Australia, who wrote one of today’s most popular songs of faith titled Oceans. The chorus sings…

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders
Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander
And my faith will be made stronger
In the presence of my Savior.

Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

Will you join me today, in remembering a favorite seashore, and in meditating on Psalm 139?

Filed Under: Inspiration, Music Stories, Spiritual Journey Tagged With: Climb to the Sky, counting the sand of the sea, Great Ocean Road, Open Spaces, Psalm 139, Singing in the Ocean Deeps

Humpback Whales Echoing Brilliance

March 31, 2014 By Stanton Lanier Leave a Comment

When is the last time you saw something brilliant?

What does this have to do with humpback whales? The connection was a “brilliant” experience for me. In high school and college years I worked several summers at Adventures Unlimited, the largest canoe rental in the Florida panhandle. In recent years they built one of the top zip line tours in the southeast through pine forests and along the Coldwater River. Jack, the owner, and my boss, taught me and all his employees the value of hard work and customer service. He also made sure we laughed and had fun in the process. He was, and still is, a great leader and visionary on a person-to-person basis, with creating unique outdoor adventures, and with preserving natural beauty. He is also a lifelong friend.

I got to see Jack last December when he and a friend attended one of my concerts in the area. My performance included Singing in the Ocean Deeps from the album Open Spaces. Afterward his friend said, “I have a friend in Tonga, in the South Pacific, who is a world-class ocean videographer. Do you want me to see if he might want to combine his film with your music?” Below is the result…

Sometimes we see something brilliant, literally, like this amazing video of a mother humpback whale and her calf. Sometimes we “see”something brilliant when we take notice that something good wasn’t just a coincidence. Like what may happen through a friend. Sometimes we can sense that God was the author of “brilliant” as expressed in Psalm 8 (The Message)…

“God, brilliant Lord, yours is a household name. Nursing infants gurgle choruses about you; toddlers shout the songs that drown out enemy talk, and silence atheist babble. I look up at your macro-skies, dark and enormous, your handmade sky-jewelry, moon and stars mounted in their settings. Then I look at my micro-self and wonder, why do you bother with us? Why take a second look our way? Yet we’ve so narrowly missed being gods, bright with Eden’s dawn light. You put us in charge of your handcrafted world, repeated to us your Genesis-charge, made us lords of sheep and cattle, even animals out in the wild, birds flying and fish swimming, whales singing in the ocean deeps. God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.”

This is the passage that birthed Singing in the Ocean Deeps. God was brilliant as the inspiration came, as the piano keys began to sound like the ocean, and as the French horn was added in the recording studio to symbolize whales singing.

What is an experience that echoed “God, brilliant Lord” in your story?

Filed Under: Inspiration, Life Stories, Music Stories, Spiritual Journey Tagged With: Brilliance, Humpback Whales, Ocean Deeps, Open Spaces, Psalm 8, Singing in the Ocean Deeps

Singing in the Ocean Deeps

October 29, 2013 By Stanton Lanier 4 Comments

You can listen to Singing in the Ocean Deeps from the new album Open Spaces at stantonlanier.com, iTunes, Amazon MP3 and many other outlets. I can remember visiting Myrtle Beach, South Carolina as a young boy growing up in North Carolina. There were no condos or tall buildings on the beach. It was just sand and camp grounds. That was my first time to hear the ocean waves. The sights and sounds of beach and ocean invited me into their wonder and adventure through the whispers of gentle breeze. Then we moved to the Florida panhandle just before my eleventh birthday, and I was introduced to another new world — the Gulf of Mexico, with the finest white sands, sea oats swaying, and gorgeous shades of blue and green waters, sending smaller waves on shore than the Atlantic. Little did I know that Psalm 8, which entered my life about twenty years ago (and happened to be twenty years after those boyhood memories), would tie together the wonder and mystery of the ocean with a piano melody expressing the marvelous ocean deeps, with its whales symbolized by French horn (my new friend Richard “Gus” Sebring, Principal French Horn for the Boston Pops Orchestra joins me on the recording, as piano and horn dance like oceans and whales). Psalm 8 (NIV) opens “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth.” Then, a little ways down, in the words of The Message Bible…”You put us in charge of your handcrafted world, repeated to us your Genesis-charge, Made us lords of sheep and cattle, even animals out in the wild, Birds flying and fish swimming, whales singing in the ocean deeps. God, brilliant Lord, your name echoes around the world.” What is your favorite ocean animal which symbolizes peace, rest, and beauty to you? Think about this as you view this new music video. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Life Stories, Music Stories, Peace and Rest, Spiritual Journey Tagged With: Instrumental Worship, Ocean Music, Ocean Piano, Ocean Video, Open Spaces, Psalm 8, Singing in the Ocean Deeps, Stanton Lanier, Whales Music

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