The Bar Room Song...

Keith called to me from the living room this morning...hey, do you like this song?  He received the link in an email from Elwin Roach.  For some reason it brought tears to my eyes.  It is an old recording...sung in an Emily Lou Harris twang times ten style...but I loved the words...and the story behind the song.  And to be honest, I have always liked "twang."  If you go to the link click the Blackslider's Waltz link at the very top of the page (not lower left) to open it up in Windows Media Player or Real Player. 

I asked a preacher if he would come down to the barroom and talk to my friends...

They were ashamed to go into the church and they wondered if he'd come to them.

But he said that Christians don't go to those places full of darkness and sin

I guess he'd forgotten it said in the Bible that Jesus made sinners his friends...

Chorus: Cause I've seen Jesus come walking in places that only a sinner would go....

And he walked right thorough all the sin and the darkness, found me and made me his own.

I thought I could run from the Lord, if I hid in the darkness of sin

Well you can't imagine the look on my face when I turned and saw him  walking in

Well, I've known his love in the midst of my sin and in the darkness his light has still shown

Why I've even seen his face now and then in the eyes of some sinners I've known

Chorus...

If Christians would only begin to see Jesus walking and living as them

They wouldn't limit his power to save in the middle of darkness and sin

But if they keep thinking that they are too holy to go out among sinful men

Well, they're like the cup  Jesus said was clean on the outside but dirty within....

Chorus....

Yea,,, I know that God can go walking in places that only a sinner would go

Cause he sent his son through the sin and the darkness to find them and make them his own.....

Sandy Fallis

Our dear friend of many years died August 16, 2006 after battling cancer. We love all of Sandy's songs, but one in particular, The Backslider's Waltz, or as we always called it, The Barroom Song, it always stood out to Margit and myself. She wrote  it perhaps 20 years ago, when she and her husband, Jack, were in very dire financial straits. Sandy entered a music contest at a night club where they lived in Artesia, New Mexico. $100 went to the winner, and you guessed it, she won the contest which put food on the table for her kids, plus a couple of other bills that needed immediate attention.

Moreover, she said that there were tears flooding down just about everyone's cheeks, especially that of the drunks. They told her that they had never heard anything like that in their lives, that she sang a song about a Lord that they could believe in and embrace.