Antiblues

I saw a video.

Quite a few things begin that way these days. You watch for a moment, linger, and before you know it someone is singing gospel.

All my life You have been faithful.

And something happens.

I cannot quite explain what. It is not goosebumps, though I get those. Nor is it simply emotion. It is too large for that, especially when it is sung well. Not necessarily perfectly, but by someone who makes you believe those words come from somewhere.

From a life.

Perhaps gospel is a kind of antiblues.

Not because gospel denies sorrow. Quite the opposite, I think. Gospel and blues grow from the same soil. Both know loss, longing, pain and days when life offers little reason to sing.

Gospel simply does something remarkable.

The blues says:
this is what happened to me.

Gospel says:
this is what happened to me, and I am still singing.

I will sing of the goodness of God.

Exactly that.

Not because everything was good.
Not because everything turned out well.
Not because you have an answer for everything.

You sing because you look back and discover, somewhere among everything that passed, something that remained.

Call it God.
Call it faithfulness.
Call it love.

Perhaps it does not even need a name.

Some things are larger than the words we have invented for them.

That is why we sing them.