This song was written out of a love for my adopted Homeland. My husband and I moved to Germany in 1999 so that I could stop work for a while and have some time with our first child. We thought we would be here for a year or two and go back to the States. The culture shock was huge. Moving to a small village in Germany was so far removed from our life on South Beach, Florida that it took me a while to come to terms with the changes. And it wasn’t just the weather. Everything was different. I couldn’t get my favourite foods, stroll to the beach, stretch out on the balcony in the sun in December and I couldn’t even go shopping on Sunday! South Beach was a friendly community and everyone greeted each other with a smile and friends were made easily.
It took a few years before I got used to it, but I gradually began to appreciate the differences in Germany. Suddenly nothing in my life was the same and I came to see that “different" doesn’t have to mean bad. After a while I was sure that it was God who had brought my husband and I here. It was here that I met and came to know a God I had never known despite being brought up in a Christian family and going to Christian schools. I might say cynically that my particular Christian upbringing might be the reason I didn’t know God, but it probably had more to do with me than my surroundings.
Slowly, but surely I fell in love with Germany and grew to love the very different ways of the German people. I fell in love with this land that God also loves. Germany definitely has a God-given calling on it and I do believe that it is being called back onto the path divinely set out for it.
This song came about as my heart was captured by this ancient land with incredible potential that many Germans themselves did not appreciate. I was amazed that so many people did not see the treasure their country was. I started telling everyone what an incredible place this is and I was filled with the desire to sing about the beauty and divine calling on this land.
That is how this song was birthed. We sing it in our church and when I hear it and sing it I am always filled with such passion for Germany. It is probably the last place on earth I thought I would end up but I am grateful that God brought me here and I get to see what God is doing and will do in the land where His Word was brought back to the people so that everyone was given the chance to read God’s word..
