Sonlife’s Season: Frank Poland: Lyrics and Music – Ecclesiastes 3:1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. After fifty plus years of Sonlife ministering through music, the time has come to close the season of Sonlife.
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SONLIFE’s SEASON
January of nineteen-seventy-six, four voices joined in song,
At Central Baptist Church in Hixson, where faith would carry on.
Four men began a journey that they never could have known,
That fifty years of singing would become the seeds they’d sown.
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The name was simply Sonlife, but the meaning was profound,
There is life through the Son of God, wherever hearts are found.
Our mission was to lift the Lord and let His message ring,
To encourage and inspire through every song we’d sing.
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Through city-wide crusades and revivals we would go,
To festivals and homecomings, where His love we sought to show.
We’ve sung upon the river where the Southern Belle would glide,
For nineteen years of gospel music flowing with the tide.
We helped to share Chattanooga with the visitors who came,
While singing of our Savior and proclaiming Jesus’ name.
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We’ve watched technology change the way our music could be heard,
From vinyl records spinning to technology’s digital word.
From forty-fives and seventy-eights to eight-tracks down the line,
Then cassettes, CDs, and USBs in time.
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Our songs have crossed the nation, every state from shore to shore,
And through the internet they’ve traveled to many countries more.
Though four men stood together where the music first began,
The message traveled farther than we ever dreamed it can.
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And then there’s our distinction—we can say it with a grin:
We helped those famous quartets by singing before them.
The Statesmen and the Blackwoods, the Cathedrals led the way,
The Speers and Happy Goodmans, Masters Five sang many days.
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How could we claim such credit for the legends of the day?
We opened every concert—then stepped aside and let them play!
If Sonlife’s opening numbers made their greatness shine so bright,
We gladly take the credit for improving their songs each night!
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We’ve planted seeds in people who went on to make their way,
Into sound and music careers that flourish to this day.
For somewhere in their journey, Sonlife helped them find their road,
And seeds that we had planted grew beyond what we had sowed.
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But life was not just music, and the journey was not easy,
There were times the road grew difficult, the valleys dark and uneasy.
We lost our moms and fathers, brothers, sisters, friends so dear,
And grandchildren and grandparents throughout those passing years.
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We’ve stood beside each other through the sickness and the pain,
Through cancer, heart surgeries, and surgeries again.
Through joints replaced and healing, we continued on our way,
For God kept giving strength enough to sing another day.
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We’ve sung through joys and sorrows, through the laughter and the tears,
We’ve shared more than a microphone through all these many years.
For Sonlife was not merely four voices blending into one,
It was friendship, faith, and fellowship beneath the Father’s Son.
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And now the time has come to sing the final song we know,
The curtain soon will open, and the final notes will flow.
A swan song is a final act, an ending understood,
But endings in God’s kingdom are not endings for the good.
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November the first, twenty-twenty-six, will bring us home once more,
To Central Baptist Church in Hixson, where we opened long before.
The very place that heard our first song will hear our final one,
And after fifty years of singing, we’ll say farewell when done.
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So this is not goodbye to everything that we hold dear,
For Jesus has been faithful through each and every year.
Our voices may grow silent, but the message carries on:
There is life through the Son—and that life will still be strong.
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Fifty years of Sonlife—what a journey God has led,
Through valleys filled with sorrow and through blessings richly spread.
Three thousand five hundred concerts, countless lives along the way,
And now we reach the ending of our earthly singing day.
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So sing it, Sonlife brothers, let the final music ring,
For this is not the ending of the message that we sing.
Our Swan Song may be ending, but our greatest song has won—
For life, eternal life, is found through God’s beloved Son.
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