When Israel’s Babylonian captors ordered them to sing one of their songs of Zion, Israel replied, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” (Psalm 137:3-4) I don’t know if Israel ever sang any of their worship songs under Babylonian rule, but African and African-American Slaves, throughout their captivity, praised and prayed unto the Lord in song. Their songs ascended to heaven as a sweet-smelling fragrance before the Lord who in return, infused them with faith, hope and perseverance that empowered them to overcome their circumstances and thrive in an environment that was persistently hostile to them.
James Weldon and John Rosamond Johnson wrote and composed “Lift Every Voice and Sing!” ascribed as the Black National Anthem, and rightly so because it describes the stages of our struggles and victories. It acknowledges God as the center of our accomplishments. The Lord is why our ancestors could sing, and its why we, who still find our freedom and progress in Him, still sing. Even on our worst days, we sing, and shout, and dance!
Lift Every Voice and Sing!
“Lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise high as the listening skies, let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us, Facing the rising sun of our new day begun let us march on till victory is won.
Stony the road we trod bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died; Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet come to the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come over a way that with tears has been watered, we have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.
God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy might led us into the light, keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, lest our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee; Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand. True to our God, True to our native land.”