The Solace Project began when a friend, who was then dying of cancer, sent us an email to say that he had compiled several of my songs on a CD and was using it for pain management and comfort. He wrote in his diary, “I want to see a ‘sustaining’ CD from Steve Bell, a compilation that would help those who are dying and those who love them.” Ben had gone as far as to list which songs he thought would be best and had even thought through possible packaging scenarios for a CD. It occurred to us at Signpost that this could be a meaningful project and so we went ahead and put SOLACE together.
Some of the songs from earlier albums were sounding rather dated up next to the more recent, so my son Jesse and I went into the studio to re-record several songs including, Wings of an Eagle, Hear our Prayer – among others. It also occurred to us that such a project would be enhanced by including a second disc containing the content of an audio magazine I hosted several years ago called Can God Be Trusted. This disk contains a collection of interviews, songs and book reviews all revolving around the place of God, and indeed the trustworthiness of God given situations of suffering and loss.
We’ve also set up a way to accept donations toward the project so that we can simply give it away to hospital chaplains, hospice workers, pastors, lay caregivers and others who accompany those who are suffering. We’ve raised enough money to give away thousands of copies.
If you would like to contribute, please visit www.solaceproject.com for more information and details.
Someone left this marvelous quote on the Solace website: “It is a great sadness when sufferers seek relief by sparing God his sovereignty over pain. The sadness is that this undercuts the very hope it aims to create…pain and loss are bitter providences. Who has lived long in this world of woe without weeping, sometimes until the head throbs and there are no more tears…? But oh the folly of trying to lighten the ship of suffering by throwing God’s governance overboard. The very thing the tilting ship needs in the storm is the ballast of God’s good sovereignty, not the unburdening of deep and precious truth. What makes the crush of calamity sufferable is not that God shares our shock, but that His bitter providences are laden with the bounty of love.”– John Piper
