After several mass shootings in the United States, worship leader Ryan Fonseca took to the piano and wrote a song.
Fonseca served alongside author and speaker, Max Lucado in their San Antonio church for over five years. After Fonseca shared his new song Unfold on Instagram, Lucado shared it as well with his 159,000 followers.
"I've been off and on songwriting ... I still have a heart for songs and melodies. ... Occasionally, I'll sit down, whenever I'm inspired, especially when it's along the lines of my faith," says Fonseca.
Speaking of Lucado, Fonseca says, "He had written something along the lines of the tragedies recently here in the States about 'looking upward and not inward' during these times.
"That was a line that was very inspiring and I was in Scripture that morning, as well, and saw the scripture that said, 'The unfolding of Your Word brings wisdom to the simple.' ... That was inspiring and I sat at the piano and just kind of played through some melodies. So the songwriting process for that particular song was very fast."
Fonseca wrote the piano-driven worship song in less than 40 minutes.
He quickly took to Instagram to record the song before he lost the melody: "Once the creative juices get flowing, I like to act quick because they can be gone. So I set up a camera real quick so I could record."
Fonseca, despite growing up surrounded by music, had chosen biology as his major in university. "I thought I would go into dentistry or something like that," he says.
"This song came out of my faith and hope for something better."
It did not take long for Fonseca to come back to a life of music.
"We had a piano in the house for my brother - he was taking lessons - but I play by ear, so I had never formally been trained. ... I just have had a knack for hearing melodies and just developed it over the years. I just really had a desire to do music."
Fonseca sees music not as a whole, but a part of something more: "People are more valuable than music. I think music is like a tool or service. I kind of like to tell other worship leaders - I was a waiter for five years, and to me, it is like waiting tables - ... more than anything its a way of serving somebody."
"Music can be really minuscule when you think about tragedies, you know, and the unfortunate tragedies of this world, just the horrific things that can happen. ... People have a fundamental desire for something beyond everything that we see here and music can help serve that because it's invisible, but yet it still moves you."
Fonseca says, "The beautiful thing about the language of music is that it serves on a different level, almost on an emotional level and a spiritual level.
"For this particular song, I'm so grateful that I was able to get in tune with the spirit of my faith and put it to a melody that could really draw the listener in. I'm really grateful that a lot of people have resonated with this tune."
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