By Marty Nystrom
Arranged to NAF by Sara DuVall

I needed to come up for air a little in the middle of my ongoing blog series, and Friday, I received a beautiful photo opportunity that inspired me to transpose this song.

As the deer panteth for the water
So my soul longeth after Thee.
You alone are my heart’s desire
And I long to worship Thee.
You alone are my strength, my shield.
To You alone may my spirit yield.
You alone are my heart’s desire
And I long to worship Thee.

I want You more than gold or silver.
Only You can satisfy.
You alone are the real joy-giver
And the apple of my eye.
You alone are my strength, my shield.
To You alone may my spirit yield.
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship Thee.

I want You more than any other
Even though You are a King.
I love you more than any other,
So much more than anything.
You alone are my strength, my shield.
To You alone may my spirit yield.
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship Thee.

This version of the lyrics is the older version that I grew up with. It uses the more archaic second person pronoun Thee instead of You a select number of times. It also says, “may my spirit yield” instead of the newer version that says, “will my spirit yield.” I’m all about the nostalgia and alliteration, so I stuck with the older lyrics.

I couldn’t help but stick this post in here because of the amazing pictures I was able to take in the early morning. My husband gave me a new camera for Christmas and its zoom is incredible. I’m still working on getting used to its settings, but I thought this was such a rare moment, the pictures are still worth enough to share.

It was enough to remind me of an old song and to motivate me to transpose it to the Native American style flute. I started to transpose it using the sheet music and then decided to just go by ear. It may not be pitch perfect, but my goal was to translate the essence of the melody I remember to the flute structure and not its most precise pitch or scale. The NAF is more adaptive to relative scale. The recording sounds more buzzy than in reality, but I wanted to give you some sort of recording with he time I have.

View and download a PDF copy of the NAF TAB for this song FREE.

Enjoy, and until next time, God bless.

“As a deer pants for flowing streams,
    so pants my soul for you, O God” (Ps. 42:1).

“He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters” (ps. 23:2).