Talk:10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)
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Tradition of launching of pages for gospel songs
[edit]Wikipedia has, in a recent count, almost 5.1 million articles in English and many millions more in other languages. As an avid editor in Wikipedia, I have personally launched literally thousands of pages on Wikipedia and edited on thousands of others improving them and adding to them. But I do admit, some of the greatest personal satisfaction I have had, was in launching of Wikipedia pages for contemporary gospel songs, including for example for "In Christ Alone" by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, of "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High by Rick Founds and now "10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord)" by Jonas Myrin and Matt Redman. Encouraged by what I found on one of the versions of "In Christ Alone", I also launched a page for a 19th century gospel "My Hope Is Built on Nothing Less" by Edward Mote with music from "Solid Rock" by William B. Bradbury.
What usually happens is that I am extremely touched by the immense beauty of such songs from the first time I hear them almost by accident, as I do not actively listen to gospels. Usually while doing search for songs on YouTube on totally unrelated music, I run into these contemporary gospel songs and they amaze me profoundly and strike me with their inspiring music and lyrics. As Jason Gray says in his absolutely awesome "More Like Falling in Love", "In more than a name, a faith, a creed / Falling in love with Jesus brought the change in me". That's what these songs do to me. Then I run to check if the song has been covered in Wikipedia and in all the enumerated cases above, I found none whatsoever on Wikipedia, no independent articles, which greatly puzzled and genuinely surprised me, given the tens of thousands of editors we have. This absence of articles on these profound hymns and gospels that I had just heard gave me the incentive to immediately start the necessary research on a song I didn't know just five minutes earlier, and do the necessary research while incessantly listening to the song concerned tens of times in various versions with even more amazement... resulting in completing the pages for them that you see on Wikipedia, hoping many other readers will browse Wikipedia and find the information, and thus the beauty of this great Wikipedia project in being a blessing to readers, and in case of gospels, literally a blessing as they read about them. So do not despair when you don't find something you were looking for on Wikipedia. Don't curse the darkness but instead light a small light by your research and lo and behold, you would have created a small "miracle" of your own, shedding light where there was none when you first tried it and annoyingly didn't find what you were looking for in Wikipedia (yes it happens). But all it takes is one determined and dedicated editor touched by something to spend his or her precious time to do the research and launch the page. This is beautifully expressed in the lyrics of a Cliff Richard song (himself a singer of many gospel songs) particularly in "All That Matters" written as a tribute to Lady Diana where Cliff sings "The love in you, and the love in me, is all that matters" / "All the rest is just vanity, that time will shatter" / "The only treasure in the life we live, is in the measure of the love we give" / "All that matters in the end will be, the love in you, and the love in me and that's all that matters". It's in this spirit that I created these pages.
Also a personal note of thanks to all those singer songwriters above that enlightened me with their precious lyrics and compositions. I remain forever grateful to you, and these pages are a token word of thanks for your effort in raising my spirit in my darkest moments. Also thanks to Wikipedia for making my day every day I edit on its pages and specially when I edit on such delightful and touching occasions. werldwayd (talk) 10:42, 3 March 2016 (UTC) werldwayd (talk) 15:53, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
- Thanks to you, Werldwayd, for this article. Micheledisaveriosp (talk) 22:37, 19 March 2020 (UTC)