Nate Marialke: Blog

About a year ago I was driving around with my nephews, who were visiting from Nashville, TN; Ian, Avi, and Isaiah. We were listening to a demo of a song I had just written, "Rise From Zion". When the opening guitar riff, which is like "Middle East meets Rock N Roll", blasted through the speakers they all began to bob their heads simultaneously. It was a lot of fun as they asked me to play it over and over again. Finally one of them pipes up,

"Uncle Nate? What does Eliza-Zion mean?"

It took me a split second to realize they were asking about the Lyrics of the song. They meant, "What does rise from Zion mean". Great question. What the heck is Zion and why should praises rise from it. My answer?

STORY BEHIND THE SONG
When I was writing for the album last spring I kept coming back to the song that became "Rest" I wanted to write something that expressed the struggle that many go through in life at different seasons and how God is ultimately the place of rest that we long for. So many times it is through prayer that we find that place of peace and wholeness and even the answer to our question. But because we are human we sometimes forget that and try to solve problems on our own, when that does not work hopefully we turn to God in prayer. It is amazing how many times the answer really is "just a prayer away". I also wrote this song with the city of Detroit in mind. living in the metro Detroit area and being in the city often really has me convinced that the foundational hope of Detoit being revived is through people turning to God and praying. As I write this I am so encouraged, last Saturday April 16th thousands of people showed up downtown and prayed, it was amazing. Also the prayer [...]

I confess my secret. Sometimes I crave Taco Bell (for my German friends, this is American fast food at it's best). Today was one of those rare occasions that I found myself lured in by the promise of crunchy goodness. I gladly relinquished $4.44 for 3 tacos infused with at least two packets of "south of the border" spicy high fructose corn syrup washed down by the perfect mix (only I know how to do it) of Pepsi and it's apparently more spirited kid brother "Wild Cherry Pepsi". While I was enjoying my gringofied Mexican fare I was reading a book called "Radical" where I was reminded that 3 billion people on this globe struggle to find food on less than 2 dollars per day. 2 dollars. 3 billion people. 26,000 children will not live out this day because of hunger. because they don't have $4.44 to spend on lunch, and in at least one billion cases, they don't even have one dollar to try to scrounge food for the day. Now, do I feel guilty for having lunch? Not one bit. But I WOULD [...]

I am so excited about this new album; 4 songs were done in the studio in Nashville with producer Steve Hindalong. Some of you may be familar with his work on the "City on a Hill project"