You Are Near (AOV 1/112)

This is Dan Schutte’s very popular song that is now wrong because it says the “Yahweh” word. He writes perceptively about the problem here and the revised text is here. It sings better with the original text.

It can be purchased for download at OCP.

You can hear it with organ and choir here and I suspect this is the original.

I think we have stopped using it although it was in high rotation for a long time. There are subtle differences in the melody between the verses, which we have always completely ignored.

Refrain

Yahweh, I know you are near,
standing always at my side.
You guard me from the foe,
and you lead me in ways ever-lasting.

Verse 1
Lord, you have searched my heart,
and you know when I sit and when I stand.
Your hand is upon me protecting me from death,
keeping me from harm.
Refrain

Verse 2
Where can I run from your love?
If I climb to the heavens you are there;
if I fly to the sunrise or sail beyond the sea,
still I’d find you there.

Refrain

Verse 3
You know my heart and its ways,
you who formed me before I was born
in the secret of darkness before I saw the sun
in my mother’s womb.

Refrain

Verse 4
Marvelous to me are your works;
how profound are your thoughts, my Lord.
Even if I could count them, they number as the stars,
you would still be there.

Refrain

© Daniel Schutte and NALR 1971.