SKU: A0.976710

It Is Not Death to Die is a new setting of French poet Henri Abraham César Malan's Non, ce n'est pas mourir as translated by George Washington Bethune and adapted for this work. Why this text? It first came to my notice shortly after the passing of Billy Graham, who was known to paraphrase D. L. Moody,

   Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I
   am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.

Graham's bold proclamation and Malan's poetry motivated me to focus anew on the resurrection, re-remembering it as the pivotal element of the Christian faith. For if there is no resurrection, Paul says in 1 Cor 15, our faith is useless. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead! Unfortunately, singing about heaven has, perhaps, been neglected of recent decades. We seem to have focused more on the already to the detriment of the not yet. But it is important to remember that this life is not all there is! Quoting Paul again, the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us (Rom 8:18). Yet, if Christ delays, the grim inevitability of our transition into eternity is a certain experience we all face. Malan's poetry so poignantly and eloquently captures this tension that it compelled me to compose a fresh musical setting that attempts to captures the mixture of dread and hope borne out in the acclamation that death is swallowed up in victory! I pray that this setting aids the Church to remember the great hope and promise Christ has granted us:

   O Death, where is your victory?
    O Death, where is your sting?
_______________________________________________________________________________________________