August 29, 2024 - Good Morning! It's Thursday, August 29.
Bro. David is on vacation this week and is reposting some favorite devotions. This one originally ran on July 18, 2020.
In 1976 NASA launched a probe into space called Voyager I. It was controlled by a computer with 68 kilobytes of memory. By comparison, the iPad I'm using to send this devotion has 14 million kilobytes. Included in Voyager was a very special record album, a disc made of gold. On this record scientists placed greetings in 55 languages, nature sounds, and some amazing music. Selections by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and an obscure gospel musician from Texas named Blind Willie Johnson.
William Johnson Jr. was born near Brenham in 1897. His mother, Mary, died when he was just four. When he was seven, his father caught his stepmother with another man and beat her. In revenge she threw a bottle of caustic lye in Willie's face, leaving him blind. Willie learned to play guitar and, as a young man, was ordained as an evangelist. He sang and preached in churches and tent revivals around his native state.
In 1929, Blind Willie recorded a record in a Dallas studio. It included a wordless piece about the crucifixion called "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground". It's a strange, haunting song. Johnson's voice is a melancholy moan. It brings to mind the words in Romans 8:26 - "In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. When we do not know what to pray, He intercedes for us through wordless groans".
Although Johnson saw some initial success after this recording, the Great Depression left him penniless. He barely scratched out a living as the pastor of a tiny church in Beaumont. One day in 1945 the church building burned and Johnson, who had been living in the back of the church, had nowhere else to go. For weeks he slept among the ruins, and then he came down with pneumonia and he died.
As of this morning, Voyager I is 14 billion miles from earth, and still moving on its journey through the universe. It has become the first man-made object to pass the farthest planet from our sun. Blind Willie Johnson, a penniless, unknown preacher died in 1945. And now his song about the cross of Jesus . . . has left the solar system.
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
