Music: Father forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing

A setting of Luke 23:34

I went to church tonight and Mark’s sermon was on Cain and Abel, and the Lord Jesus, whose "blood speaks a better word than Abel's blood".

It's a very small church service and we were talking about Corrie Ten Boom afterwards and how she forgave a Nazi commandant who had been one of the ones in charge of the concentration camp: she stepped forward and shook his hand, in faith and obedience to God, and she felt the love and forgiveness of God flowing through her to him.

Now one of the ladies at church mentioned that Corrie Ten Boom at that time had had a ministry in Holland of helping the Dutch forgive the Germans, and if she hadn't forgiven the commandant, her ministry would have been over.

Anyhow, this story, plus the sermon, touched my heart.

And a melody came to me -- from God’s Spirit, I am sure -- with the words of Jesus as they were nailing him to the cross, "Father forgive them, for they don't know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34) and I set it as a choral fugue, in Finale first, then working in Propellerhead Reason… It will be one of the movements, maybe the final movement, in the Requiem I’m writing.

I've been using an excellent sampled choir called "East West Hollywood Choir" which can actually sing the words if you type them in, in a kind of phonetic notation that's not perfect; it’s still a work in progress, but it does it reasonably well: I've recorded a version of this piece (done it really quickly actually, in about 8 hours. It's nearly 5am in Australia now - worked on it virtually all night, but it’s done.)