The Forty-Day Journey of Promise
Day Twenty-Six: Joyful Sorrow
Note: Welcome to The Journey, our forty-day blog series from MLK Day through the end of Black History Month. We’re learning life lessons from the legacy of African American Christianity. The series is based upon material from my book Beyond the Suffering. To learn more about Beyond the Suffering, including downloading a free chapter, click here.
Life Is Lived in the Minor Key
Enslaved African Americans candidly faced both sorrow and joy. The following well-known slave spiritual illustrates this truth.
Nobody knows the trouble I see,
Nobody knows like Jesus,
Nobody knows the trouble I see,
Glory hallelujah!
A slave who was initially puzzled by the tone of joyful sadness that echoed and re-echoed in spirituals eloquently explains the paradox.
“The old meeting house caught on fire. The spirit was there. Every heart was beating in unison as we turned our minds to God to tell him of our sorrows here below. God saw our need and came to us. I used to wonder what made people shout, but now I don’t. There is a joy on the inside, and it wells up so strong that we can’t keep still. It is fire in the bones. Any time that fire touches a man, he will jump.”
African American Christians understood that life is lived in the minor key. They knew that they could not avoid or evade suffering.
Highest Joy and Deepest Sadness
Frederick Douglass recalls that the spirituals reveal “at once the highest joy and the deepest sadness.” As the slaves reflected on the human condition, they did not demand answers. However they did insist upon candor about suffering and courageous affirmations of joy. The combination often led to a jarring contrast when they juxtaposed earthly suffering and heavenly hope.
An eloquent image of life’s alteration between ups and downs, sorrow and joy, occurs in one of the lesser known verses of Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Had.
One morning I was a-walking down,
Saw some berries a-hanging down,
I pick de berry and I suck de juice,
Just as sweet as de honey in de comb.
Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down,
Sometimes I’m almost on de groun’.
Wild, Sad Strains
Lucy McKim Garrison sent a letter to the November 8, 1862, edition of Dwight’s Journal of Music that powerfully displays this melding of agony and joy found in the spirituals.
“The wild, sad strains tell, as the sufferers themselves never could, of crushed hopes, keen sorrow, and a dull daily misery which covered them as hopelessly as the fog from the rice-swamps. On the other hand, the words breathe a trusting faith in rest in the future—in ‘Canaan’s fair and happy land,’ to which their eyes seem constantly turned.”
Today’s comforters can imitate the model set by enslaved African Americans who knew how to mingle the many moods of faith, who knew how to sing with “tones loud, long, and deep,” and who “breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.”
Today’s comforters can replicate the soul-stirring honesty of the Psalmists of old who knew how to write psalms of complaint and of celebration, of lament and of longing, who knew how to pour out their souls fully to God.
Join the Conversation (Post a Comment for a Chance to Receive a Copy of Beyond the Suffering)
1. How well are you able to mingle suffering and joy?
2. How candidly are you able to celebrate God’s goodness even while experiencing life’s “badness”?
This post brings back to mind something that Witley Phipps shared during his very stirring performance of Amazing Grace.
He said that most Negro spirituals as well as many other songs were played entirely on the black (minor) notes of the scale. By intermingling them with the major notes they make beautiful songs of praise & worship.
I’ve learned how to mingle suffering and joy over the years. That doesn’t mean I don’t have a ways to go yet but I have learned to mine for the treasure of God’s goodness when things are bad. And I am still learning…
When we understand God’s sustaining power and presence through our suffering (Isa. 43:2), it allows us to experience joy in the midst of painful experiences. Knowing God is with you when you are going “through” provides a source of hope and encouragement. I believe that my ancestors who endured the painful experience of slavery were aware of God’s ability to sustain them, which allowed them to experience joy unspeakable. What a wonderful testimony that brings glory to God!