Pete's Retirement Party #3

 

 

Music playing is
I Can Only Imagine
Performed by MercyMe
Written and composed by lead singer Bart Millard
From their album Almost There released in 2001

Early in Bart's life, his father Arthur had been physically and emotionally abusive towards his family, with Bart
being beaten severely at points; Arthur and his wife Adele eventually divorced, and Bart was sent to live
with his mother after an especially extreme whipping. Bart kept in contact with his father, however,
who was later diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when Bart was 15. His father began to make
amends for his actions and started becoming more religiously observant, reading the Bible
and going to church regularly. As Arthur progressively became more ill, his relationship
with his son improved dramatically; by the time Arthur died in 1991, when Bart was
18, the two were very close. Millard said that I got a front row seat to see this
guy go from being a monster to falling desperately in love with Jesus. By
the time he passed away when I was a freshman in college, not only
was he my best friend, he was like the Godliest man I'd ever.
known After Arthur's death Bart became obsessed with
the phrase I can only imagine after hearing his
grandmother say that she could only
imagine what Arthur was seeing
in heaven. Millard found
comfort in the
thought

and began
to write it on anything
he could find. Once Millard
started writing the song, he estimated
that it took him only about him only about
ten minutes to write the lyrics. Millard said it was
one of the few songs he had ever written where there was
not any mistakes in the writing process; it was just written the
way it is and left at that. - From Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

 

 

 

 

 

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