You Alone Sarah Hart, Dwight Liles	(Based on 4 votes)

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Lyrics

Refrain
You alone are holy,
you alone are Lord.
You alone are worthy to be honored and adored.
Mercy you have given,
kindness you have shown.
Love is you alone.
1. Who of us is sinless in this place?
Who of us deserves your saving grace?
Who of us is good at all
without your blessed love
that falls upon our hearts
to heal our brokenness?
2. What is there to do but thank you, then,
for the gift that we might call you friend?
Greater love has not been known
than that for which you gave
your only son,
that you might see us, pure and blessed.

© 1999, Dwight Liles (used with permission of Music Services, Inc. All rights reserved.) and Sarah Hart. Published by spiritandsong.com®, a division of OCP. All rights reserved.

Artist Reflection

Funny what you remember about writing a song. For me, it's always kooky things: what the lighting was like, or smells in the air, the shirt I was wearing; such nonsense as that. So, not to disappoint . . . I wrote this song with my dear friend, Dwight Liles — and when I say "dear" I mean one of the dearest people I have ever known! We were at the old, ugly BMG building on Music Row in Nashville. Those offices were terrible! The fluorescent lighting all but sapped the creative energy out of everyone who stepped off the elevator. That day someone had left a pot of coffee sitting overnight on a burner, while someone else had made popcorn for breakfast. So the whole floor smelled like cowboy coffee and Orville.

I walked into the very, VERY cramped writers room (full of boxes of BMG Record Club catalogs) with Dwight, and we sat to talk and infuse ourselves with caffeine. Dwight was in seminary at the time, so I let him do most of the talking. :) As we chatted, Dwight, for some reason began talking about God being our sustenance (probably a money thing, because most of us musician types are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy at any given moment). I recall the words "God alone will suffice" hanging in the air. Dwight sat down right away and started playing the piano, and the first notes and words out of my mouth were "you alone are holy, you alone are Lord." So we pulled the song down.

I don't mean to make light of the songwriting process at all, but it is still, after all this time, beyond me how beautiful and bizarre the whole thing can be. You write something and God somehow sees fit to let it reach people, though you are just doing what you love to do. And when the song begins to take wings people say, "thank you" . . . and that is so strange. Songs are so often floating mid-air, and you just pluck them out of that air, and you really have very little to do with it. "You Alone" was like that. Just two friends, drinking coffee under horrid lighting, doing the work they love.

Plucking stuff out of the air, for the One who put it there. (Hey that rhymes!)

But truly, I am extremely grateful that this song has reached the hearts of so many. This is what, as a writer, you are always praying for: that those little scratches on paper will reach the heart of someone who needs it.

- Sarah Hart