Crying out from the ground

Adam's sons walking out to the field, 

Cain with rage, jealous rage, in his eyes,

Rising up, strikes with harm in his heart.

Abel falls to the ground and he dies.

See our God, from on high:

Hear the sorrow for his child; hear the sound.

Know that God, from on high,

Heard his blood crying out from the ground.

 

Through the years, countless numbers have died,

Shot or hung, all because of their race; 

It is sin, it is crime and much more

To see justice denied in each case.

See our God, from on high:

Hear the sorrow for his children abound.

Know that God, from on high,

Hears their blood crying out from the ground.

 

If we say we seek justice for God,

And the Spirit we seek to obey,

Then this wrong we can no more deny

And this truth can no more turn away.

See our God, from on high; 

Let this sorrow in our hearts now be found.

Like our God, so may we

Hear their blood crying out from the ground.

 

 

TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, February 2022.

MUSIC: Tune SWEET BY AND BY, Joseph P. Webster, 1868. 

 

 

Background: on February 19 I attended a Soil Collection Ceremony sponsored by a local remembrance group with support from the Equal Justice Initiative, an act of remembering the lynchings of five different individuals (one a child), from the 1880s to the 1920s, in the eastern towns of this county. Soil from roughly the lynching cites had been collected and added to two jars, one of which will stay in this county and the other will go to the EJI Legacy Museum in Montgomery. This text comes of taking in and processing this experience. (I will admit that placing this text, with its focus squarely on remembering wrongs done on this earth, with a tune associated with a rather heaven-as-escapist-fantasy song does have some satisfaction.)