On a recent Sunday morning a dozen alumni of the Doxology Choir at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church sang beautifully. Their voices exceeded what one would normally expect from a group of a dozen teens and the origin of the text of the song the words added meaning.
There are multiple versions of the lyric’s origin but all of them are dated about the time of World War II and the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. One version has the words of the three-line poem scratched on the wall of a cave, next to the body of a Jewish girl who had escaped the Warsaw ghetto. Another source says the poem was found scratched into a stone wall in Cologne, Germany, in a damp and dark cellar that once hid Jews trying to escape the holocaust. Another account reports that these three lines were scratched into the wall of a German concentration camp during World War II.
Regardless of the accuracy of any of these reports , it is clear that In the midst of the horror of the Holocaust, someone declared their faith in the God that did not answer the way they thought God would. Some anonymous person, almost certainly a Jew, maintained faith in God and in love, despite all the harm done to them by the Nazis.
The horrors of Afghanistan. Earthquakes in Haiti, Flooding in Tennessee. Wildfires in the west. Murders in our cities and neighborhoods. Upsurge of COVID.
The words of this poem have been preserved and set to music serve as an inspiration to “keep the faith” regardless of the circumstances.
I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in love, even when feeling it not.
I believe in God, even when he is silent.
The following link will allow you to hear Doxology’s rendition of the song.
Jamie Jenkins
thoughts for thursday 