Some time late in 2007, during a Wednesday night service, I jotted this down on the back of a pew card or something: "I want to see/feel/be the hand of God." Pastor Rick Thompson was preaching and I don't remember his exact point but I think it was something about striving for the "be" version of that sentence. I also don't remember if Rick attributed those parallel sentences to someone else or not - all I know is that I stole them from somebody.
It was perhaps a month later that I discovered my note to myself and set about writing the song. It's about being at different places in one's journey of faith. I'm not so far down the road that I don't remember having the questions of the "young man" and part of the reason for writing the song is that the idea that someone as insignificant as me could be the hand of God astounds me.
I originally wrote this song in the key of G, using what I call faux-open tuning. That's a technique (with standard guitar tuning, actually) that, to my ear, sounds a lot like a mountain dulcimer or a drop-D guitar or something. It works particularly well in G as follows: with your ring finger and pinky, hold down the two highest strings at the third fret. This gives you D and G notes. Now, keeping those two fingers in place, you can very easily play G5, C2, Dsus4 and Em7 chords by moving your other fingers around and muting a string or two here and there.
The tuning relies on a number of open strings so it doesn't necessarily translate to other keys. I think the voicing of the melody is not going to work in G or any easily "capo-able" alternative (like A or B), so it will be interesting to see how this evolves.