There is a song on the new Matt Redman album ‘Your Grace Finds Me’ which, when I heard it for the first time, reminded me of Joan. Joan is always enthusiastic in worship and often can’t contain her joy when God does something good, shouting ‘Yippee!’ or other such phrases. In the song, the words go ‘everybody praises the thing they love’ and ‘I’ll be praising You, my God’, but towards the end, in a style that reminds me of Irish jigs, the background vocals can clearly be heard adding ‘hey!’ at the end of these lines. That enthusiasm is so typical of Joan that it made me smile when I heard it. Such joy is infectious and surely needs to be our response to all that God does!

“One name alone I am living for,
One name my heart and my soul adore.
Be the first and the last,
Be the song that I sing.
Jesus, be my everything.” (‘One Name Alone’, Matt Redman, Jonas Myrin, Jason Ingram)

‘One Name Alone’, Matt Redman