Lift Every Voice and Sing

My Reflection

My first encounter with “Lift Every Voice and Sing” came at Corona Seventh-day Adventist Church. The musical heritage there was tremendous, and it became one of the culminating influences in my family's decision to join that fellowship. This hymn was among the discoveries that made its musical life so compelling.

I cannot recall hearing it sung in Guyana or in the Caribbean settings of my earlier experience. Encountering it at Corona therefore felt like opening a door onto a musical and historical inheritance I had not previously known in quite this form. I found it surpassingly beautiful and deeply affecting.

Its power is not merely the grandeur of its melody, though that alone is striking. The hymn carries memory, struggle, aspiration and faith together. It acknowledges a difficult journey without allowing suffering the final word. In the ascent of the music I hear both collective dignity and the determination to hope.

It has significance on several levels: as a song associated with Black history and freedom, as a declaration of communal endurance and as an expression of faith that does not sever gratitude from remembrance. I am moved by the way it asks a people to lift their voices without forgetting the road by which they came.

Corona gave me more than another favourite song. It enlarged my sense of what sacred music could carry, and of how the musical inheritance of a congregation can help draw a family into its fellowship.

What I Carry

A congregation's musical inheritance can open new worlds of history, faith and belonging.