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I decided to partially take the text from Psalm 22 and see what happens if you get rid of the "God" parts. This is what I came up with.

I just arranged a religious theme into a series of piano variations, hope you like it! the video: 【黄越青】昔日所唱诗歌（钢琴变奏曲）_哔哩哔哩_bilibili

I'm sure I could find more things to fidget with, but I'm tired of staring at it. Anyone else want to stare at it for me instead? Suggestions for notating the piano reduction are particularly welcome. I'm not a pianist and there are a lot of moving lines to squish in there. I'd love to know what people think in general. Score attached so you can follow along with the words while you listen. The text is from the psalms and translates to "As a hart longs for the flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God." Hart is an old fashioned word for "deer." It's also a pun on the word "heart." Thanks! Here's a youtube with the score rolling by:

This is a choral composition written for psalm 56.

Re-uploading this from the archives if it's alright. I have a real recording, and a Sibelius Essentials recording of the piece. The real recording was recorded at my senior recital and there are some technical flaws, but it is still a performance I will never forget. This piece is for Choir and String Orchestra... I put that in the title because, it is more than simply a choir piece with string accompaniment, the choir and the strings are equally important and complement each other. The piece is a religious work, but stylistically it takes a lot of film music influences. The piece is set to text from Psalm 139, my favorite chapter of Scripture, and this is probably the most personal piece I've written so far. Here's a little bit more about the background of this piece (copy/pasted from the comment archives): I wrote the essentials of this piece during the summer of 2011. I'd been tweaking it since then up until April 2013 when I had my senior recital. During the summer of 2011 I was going through a lot of anxiety, and one of the reasons was, I had finished my third year of college as a composition major, and I had basically completed nothing as far as compositions. I was almost booted out of the composition department at the end of the school year because of it, but, after a day my composition professor changed his mind and decided we would give it another try. He had me going back to the basics and was sending me some exercises over the summer, cause I didn't really feel like I knew what I was doing... While all this was going on... I thought to myself that I had always wanted to try to write something set to the text of Psalm 139, my favorite chapter in all of the Bible. So I sat down, and, I thought... I wanted it to start off sounding a bit uncertain... but then when the words come in I want it to sound like coming to peace. And, well I just can't explain it, I started writing the intro and I shocked myself. It was better than anything I had attempted for string ensemble in the past by a lot... and then the "O Lord' ostinato just came to me after the intro closed, and I wrote the music up to "You perceive my thoughts from afar". So I had that much of it done, and I sent it to my composition professor along with the first exercise. He said "forget about the exercises, keep working on this." Enjoy, and please let me know what you think! Choral Fantasy For Choir And String Orchestra - A Meditation On Psalm 139 (c) 2013 Jair W. Crawford