The music I grew up with in church made a huge difference in how I knew God. And it makes a huge difference in how I know God today. Once a month, I would go to the Primitive Baptist Church with my grandmother, and it was the music from these Sundays that I realize has given me the grounding for the faith I have today.
In the Primitive Baptist Church, we sang without instruments. You didn’t have to sing well, as long as you sang LOUD. For 30 minutes before the preaching started, we’d call out hymn numbers and the preacher would hum out the tune and the pitch before we all started together. And then after an hour or so of preaching, usually three or four preachers, we’d sing “Amazing Grace” and then get handshakes from old men who smelled like Vitalis and old women who smelled like perfume and Juicy Fruit.
In that church, we sang loud. We sang songs out of a little hymn book without notation, just words of verse. And even though we were in the middle of nowhere in Alabama, the language was elevated – elevated with an honesty that rang clear as noon on a Southern January day:
Jesus and Shall it ever be,
A mortal man ashamed of thee!
Ashamed of thee, whom angels praise,
Whose glory shines through endless days.
Ashamed of Jesus! sooner far
Let evening blush to own a star;
He sheds the beams of light
o’er this benighted soul of mine.
These songs told the truth. And the truth is that sometimes, we ARE ashamed of Jesus, or at least of our faith. The truth is that we DO struggle.
My favorite song, partly because it’s so wonderful, and partly because it was my grandma’s favorite:
How tedious and tasteless the hours
when Jesus no longer I see
sweet prospect, sweet birds, and sweet flowers,
have all lost their sweetness to me.
The midsummer sun shines but dim
the fields strive in vain to look gay
But when I am happy in him
December’s as pleasant as May
There’s the truth: sometimes we DO lose sight of Jesus. Sometimes, it does feel as though our God is gone and left us.
My grandmother and her friends at that little church sang about a faith that endured, a faith that felt infinitely more believable to me. They knew sometimes I would feel adrift, and I had only to sing of my lostness to God. I didn’t have to beg forgiveness for getting lost in the first place.
Faith is a gift. I know that because I’ve never gone looking for faith. In fact, I’ve come up with plenty of reasons to leave it behind. When I think hard enough or long enough, I can find plenty of reasons to leave the whole thing behind. But in the early morning dark, or sometimes in the dead of the night, I stumble over something or see it shining in the corner. It’s the love of my grandmother years after she died. It’s hope when I’ve no right to expect it. It’s forgiveness when I didn’t even ask. It’s faith. Faith is a gift.
We all have difficult jobs: our offices, our parenting, our day-to-day. But even by virtue of our baptism, every one of us has a difficult job: we’re all doing our part to preach grace into a hurting and broken world. I’ll invite you to join me in this: let’s not overcomplicate it by trying to have so many answers about God. God forgives. We are raised to new life. There is plenty, plenty of grace for us all. That’s about all there is to know.
I’ll leave you to listen to the following: https://alabamaastronaut.com/track/3189849/3-endless-supply. It’s a song called “Endless Supply” by the Coots Duo. Charles and the band were gracious enough to learn it and play it this past week when we read about Jesus and the feeding of the 5,000. This song is about that miracle, but it’s also about the miracle of a simple faith, even when life isn’t so simple.
