My Lord, What a Mo(u)rning

The enslaved people who so brilliantly and touchingly reflected on Scripture in their music understood, I think, that God’s arrival on earth is the occasion for both wailing and joy, and that neither wailing nor joy can exist without the other. The pregnant woman persists through the pain of labor to deliver her child; the artist struggles through the creative process to give birth to a new work. Similarly, Christ’s coming—ultimately a great blessing for all of creation—requires massive upheaval, a tremendous disruption of the status quo that precipitates agony as well as promise.