Praise God, I’m satisfied.
Praise God I’m Satisfied.
For those of you unfamiliar with the low basso raspy voice of Blind Willie Johnson, I suggest you familiarize yourself with him. Especially with the song “Dark was the night Cold was the Ground”. An influencer as we might call him today, his music has woven its way throughout many a pop culture songs and I would dare to say that without him, we would not have a great deal of music today.
He sang the blues.
The blues is a music rooted in trial and tribulations, a genre born of old field holler songs that became an expression of a people used to uncertainty, cruelty and hardship. What grew of the melding of the hollers and gospel was a music of praise, circumspect and real life.
While not the most beautiful of voices, Blind Willie could write a mean gospel song and parallels the psalmist when he writes
“Well, it gave me joy and gladness, For the clouds he rolled away, While I’m left on Earth singin’ his praises, How glad I am today, Oh such a need had sinners, for he bowed his head and died, all right, Now I know I’m a child of his…..praise God I’m satisfied”
Here in this Lenten season, we confront our trials, we reflect on our sins, and things that distance ourselves from Christ. But amongst this introspection, we must hold higher the fact that Christ (in what sometimes to me feels esoteric and distant) we have hope and we have a savior. That through difficulties and the fog of war, Christ “clouds he rolled away”, giving us light in the darkness.
Lent is our chance to practice denying our habits and/or practices that bring those clouds. The end of Lent is the reminder that “…he bowed his head and died” for “…such a need had sinners”. So here it is that we must remember to praise God because we should be satisfied. Not in our mortal coil, but in our God and savior, in Christ, in the hope, in the end.
Blues born out of turmoil, psalms born out of strife and hiding, constantly speak to the hope Christians have in our redeemer. Remember that there is a light, it is at the end of a tunnel, it may be faint at times, but it is there and it is a blessed gift.
Praise God We Are Satisfied,
Annan Sheffield
P.S. Coincidently Blind Willie Johnson has a fantastic version of this little light of mine called “Let your light shine”. In another song called “God Don’t Never Change” He also has a line pertaining to the Spanish flu which goes “God in the time of sickness, God the doctor too. In the time of the influenza, He truly was a God to you.” An apt line for today’s world.