I had outsized emotions as a child. Games, especially, would get the best of me, whether cards or boardgames or sports. In response to a stroke of bad luck, a hot surge of anger would erupt, followed quickly by tears and then embarrassment.
Emotions are God’s gift to us in many ways. They are one of his kind ways of showing us where our deep attachments lie.
Our son started his freshman year at the University of Arizona this fall. It’s been a great experience for him, but not without its adjustments. The climate of a secular school is quite different than the Christian school he graduated from.
This past Wednesday he stepped onto campus following the election and noted the somber tone following Trump’s’ victory. His choral professor had the choir working on an adaptation of a Langston Hughes poem, “I Dream a World.”
Here are the words of Hughes’s poem:
I Dream a World
By Langston Hughes
I dream a world where man
No other man will scorn,
Where love will bless the earth
And peace its paths adorn
I dream a world where all
Will know sweet freedom’s way,
Where greed no longer saps the soul
Nor avarice blights our day.
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind –
Of such I dream, my world!
Hughes wrote “I Dream a World” in 1941, with the backdrop of World War II and the ongoing struggle for civil rights. Written when he was forty years old, “I Dream a World,” is grounded in the sober-minded challenges of the greed and avarice of the world, but with a hopefulness that these things can be overcome.
But how can evil be overcome? Hughes does not give us the answer.
While his poetry is full of Christian allusions, Hughes was not a Christian himself. Justin Taylor explains that, “In his own life, Langston Hughes rejected Christianity and considered secular solutions – a few (like the Soviet Union) monstrously evil. Hughes’s imagination, however, remained haunted by Christian images and ideas. If he died without Jesus – and who can be sure of such things?—Hughes always had the story of Jesus in his mind and heart. Christians failed Langston Hughes, even if Christ did not, but Hughes never lost faith in people, especially his people. I think, perhaps, he saw the image of God so plainly there that even his non-theism ended up God-haunted.”[i]
While the poet did not have an answer, the composer Andre Thomas did. As he set this Langston Hughes poem to music, Thomas inserted one line of his own at the end of Hughes’s poem: “Lord, reach your justice down. Reach down.”
Here is the poem with the addition of that line:
A world I dream where black or white,
Whatever race you be,
Will share the bounties of the earth
And every man is free,
Where wretchedness will hang its head
And joy, like a pearl,
Attends the needs of all mankind-
Of such I dream, my world!
Lord, reach your justice down.
Reach down.
With his addition, Thomas provided an answer to Hughes’s yearning for a better world: a good and sovereign Lord who alone can make all things right.
Unsurprisingly, the U of A conductor had asked her students at the beginning of the semester to strike those words and sing instead a reprise of the poem, “Dream, I dream. I dream of freedom.”
This past Wednesday, as the choir sang, their professor began to cry: gently at first, and then she began to weep. The floodgates opened and most of the choir joined her.
Tears are a gift from God. I have no intention of mocking. My own heart was heavy on Wednesday regarding the disappointing choice we had to make as well as by the nine states who ratified the right of abortion into their constitution. And my heart was heavy for this conductor and her choir.
The Psalmist wrote,
“I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:1-2)
Where do we believe our hope will come from? When do our emotions belie what we say? Do we believe our help is from the Lord, or from presidents or propositions or relationships or financial security?
“Lord, reach your justice down. Reach down.” May our hearts be set upon God alone as our Helper and our Refuge.
[i] Justin Taylor, “Why Christians Should Read the Short Stories of Langston Hughes,” The Gospel Coalition, February 1, 2017, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/why-christians-should-read-the-short-stories-of-langston-hughes/.
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