Celebrating Black History...Week 4
Lift Every Voice and Hear
Lift every voice and sing...sing 'til earth and heaven ring. Think...every voice. That includes voices young to old, weak to strong, rural to urban, up the road to down, and every ethnicity. Every voice is every voice and every voice is invited to sing. It is a necessity.
We need voices singing heritage, family, history and truth, wisdom from sage and vision from youth. We need songs of triumph over trials, losses not greater than gain, heartache bowing to healing, faith overcoming struggles and pain. We need songs sung by old age and youth's cry against injustice and legitimate rage keeping every voice harmoniously engaged.
Youth have songs elders need to hear if only they were heard by an attentive ear.
Hear them sing hopelessness, indifference, or dread; hear before any of these overrides the head. They hear our lyrics "stop the violence" "don't do drugs." "you're hanging with a bunch of no good thugs." They "see" lyrics of disaster, realizing any addiction is a bad slave master.
As youth lift their voices to sing, ask, "Are we getting the message they sing? Instead of a rebuke, try this refrain "I hear you. Tell me your truth." Perhaps that's a key to sing harmony.
We have songs we need youth to embrace, but they have songs they desire of us. Songs of forgiveness of mistakes and songs of redemption for goodness sake. And if we in truth and love hear each the other, then voices of truth, love, and righteousness shall rise of sister and brother. And one day in years to come, today's youth will tell their descendants of lessons learned...they will remember songs ancestors had sung and with a voice of faith they will pass them on.
Affirmation: Deuteronomy 6: 3 - 7
Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it; that it may be well with you, and that you may increase mightily, as the Lord God of your fathers have promised you...I command you this day, shall be in your heart: And you shall teach them diligently unto your children, and shall talk of them when thou sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.