A Few Four...'till Christmas

              Imagine for a moment that a bunch of powerful foreigners landed on our shores and just started taking us, or buying us from our governors. Imagine you and I were among those sold and stolen. We were packed into ships, dark, moldy, and bug infested, as tightly as we could fit and were sailed for weeks across a tumultuous ocean. During the journey, many people get terribly sick, you watch the young man packed in next to you slowly waste away and one morning you wake up and he's dead. The crew, your captors, toss him overboard as flippantly as if he were a bad fish. When you finally arrive at your destination, leagues upon leagues away from home, you are confronted by another sea, this of faces, all strange like those of your captor's and not a sympathetic countenance among them. You are pushed up on a block in front of simpering ladies who came to watch for amusement, and men with hard lines and cruel jaws come to purchase the labor of a stolen life.


              To top it all off, they goad you, push you to your farthest limits and reward you by telling you, and some even believing themselves, that you are less than human, worthy of no more respect and dignity than a cow.

              What would you do?

             What would you think of God for allowing this to happen to you?



            Over a hundred years ago it happened to one people, in one dark moment of history........... and they sang.

            For many African Americans had it not been for their music they might not have made it through the tortuous years of slavery and complete disrespect. Being a woman was the worst because you belonged to your master body and soul and no law protected you from his vilest desires.
........And yet, they sang.

            Today, negro spirituals are some of the most fun, uplifting songs I know. I often think on the well known Spiritual Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen, and marvel at the sheer faith of these individuals. They didn't let the worst possible circumstances, promoted by the worst possible men, steal their joy.


            Think about that. If you were in those circumstances could you end a refrain with "Glory Hallelujah?" I know I'd have trouble with that. Every time I sing this song it is with sheer admiration and respect for the nameless soul who wrote it somewhere, sometime in America amidst the worst kind of enslavement.

             So What does this have to do with Christmas? Glad you asked.

            The African American enslavement was another one of those apparent manifestations of why need a Saviour...to set us free. Yes, they were physically enslaved, but their captors were under an even worse kind of enslavement, a captivity to sin for which many were eternally damned.

            Think on this for a moment. The African Americans amidst their trouble understood something most of pampered humanity fails to grasp. That this life isn't all there is. There is more, so much more, beyond death, so much more real, tangible and important. Contrary to common misconception we will not be floating on clouds playing harps after we die. This world is only a crude copy of the perfect universe we will have to explore and cultivate, and these bodies only a corrupted model of the physical bodies we will have in glory.

           Think about this. God could have just said, "Alright, they don't want anything to do with me, fine, I'll send them all to hell, the one place from which I have withdrawn my goodness and grace completely." And yet, what did he do instead? He came Himself, born of a woman under the curse of the law, that He might redeem us from the yoke of slavery under which we toiled since the day we were born.

           This is why the slaves sang, one hundred and some odd years ago. They had a short hard life to be sure, but they understood how much worse it could be and trusted that this wasn't the end. In light of this, you can sing a lot under very hard circumstances, that is if you truly understand this, for which I admire the African Americans so much.

          Alright, the song I'm sharing with you today was written by an American in the style of the African Spirituals. The author, Andre J. Thomas, is quite a fascinating guy by the way, a man after my own heart I think.

           Think on God's beautiful redemption, as you listen to this driving song, it's enough to make anyone Shout for Joy.


        I don't think you need the lyrics for this one, just listen carefully. I like the way the African Americans knew how to do repetition right. We of European descent only sound lame when we try. ;)

            Today, no matter what tragedy takes place, whether you learn that a Christmas gift for a family member isn't going to arrive until the twenty-sixth or you're stuck in traffic with a bunch of coffee deprived individuals, remember Christ's gift and shout for joy!


    ~ Christianna