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I. Opening Lyric – The Song as a Sermon
“Lord, don’t move this mountain, but give me the strength to climb.<br>Lord, don’t take away my stumbling blocks, but guide me, O Lord, around them.”
That lyric is theology in plain speech. It doesn’t ask God for a shortcut. It doesn’t demand that the mountain vanish or the stumbling blocks disappear. Instead, it asks for strength and guidance — the power to keep moving when the road won’t get easier.
That is the sound of hope in a minor key. Not the shiny, triumphant tone of major chords, but the gritty moan of a people who know struggle. It’s not cheap optimism; it’s endurance wrapped in song. It’s the confession that God’s presence is power, even when God’s providence doesn’t remove the problem.
And here’s the question that lyric raises for us: Do we only shout when God fixes it? Or can we shout because God is already sustaining us as we climb?
II. Limited Celebration – Waiting on What We Want
The truth is, the church often trains us to only celebrate after the rescue. Testimonies are expected to sound like major-key victory stories: “God healed my body.” “God opened the door.” “God gave me the job.”
Songs reinforce it: God’s Got a Blessing With My Name on It. The shout is always about what’s coming — the breakthrough, the turnaround, the miracle just around the corner.
Now let me be clear: I am not denying that God shows up in these ways. God does heal bodies. God does open doors. God does provide in miraculous fashion. That is part of our testimony, and we should celebrate it.
What I am questioning is whether that is the only way God shows up. If celebration depends only on God “fixing it” in the way I asked, then half the church is forced into silence. Not every mountain moves. Not every stumbling block disappears.
The problem is not that God sometimes works in dramatic, visible victory — the problem is when we act as though that is the only way God can be trusted, the only reason to shout. Because the gospel says God also shows up in the climb, in the endurance, in the quiet miracle of survival — and that too deserves the dance-floor and the doxology.
III. The Long Groove – Hope in a Minor Key
Hope in a minor key refuses to wait. It says: You don’t have to wait until what you want to happen comes about. You can shout right now at the miracle in front of you:
- The miracle of perseverance.
- The miracle of being able to get up one more day.
- The miracle of still standing when life tried to knock you down.
- The miracle of breath in your lungs, faith in your heart, and a song in your mouth — even if it’s in a minor key.
This is the theology of endurance. Survival itself is grace.
Scripture bears witness. Paul’s thorn wasn’t removed (2 Corinthians 12:7–9), but God’s word was: “My grace is sufficient.” Habakkuk had no figs, no fruit, no harvest (Habakkuk 3:17–18), but still declared: “Yet I will rejoice.” Paul and Silas sang hymns at midnight (Acts 16:25) before the earthquake came. Israel wandered forty years in the wilderness, guided not by shortcuts but by pillars of cloud and fire (Exodus 13:21). God didn’t erase the desert — He walked with them through it. Jeremiah cried out, “You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived” (Jeremiah 20:7). Yet even in complaint, Jeremiah kept talking to God — endurance in lament. And in Gethsemane, Jesus Himself prayed a minor-key prayer: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Yet not my will but thine be done” (Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:42). The mountain did not move that night. But the strength to climb Calvary was given.
Add Job to the choir: “Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him” (Job 13:15). That is not naïve optimism; that is durable trust. Add the shepherd’s psalm: “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me” (Psalm 23:4). God may not airlift you out of the valley, but God will walk you through it. And add the promise of Revelation: a day of wiped tears (Revelation 21:4) — not the negation of present lament but its future healing. Minor-key hope keeps singing until that day.
This same theology sings across genres — spiritual, hymn, funk.
Verse 1 — The Spiritual. The Negro spiritual moans it in “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.” On the surface, it’s lament: nobody knows my sorrow. But tucked in the refrain: “Nobody knows but Jesus.” That’s testimony. That’s hope in a minor key. This was the song of enslaved people with no realistic expectation of earthly rescue. They weren’t celebrating an imminent “fix.” They were testifying to a God who knew their suffering and walked with them through it. The moan names the pain, but the refrain names the Savior. That’s not shallow optimism — that’s survival faith.
Verse 2 — The Hymn. The hymn sings it in “It Is Well With My Soul.” Horatio Spafford wrote those words after losing his daughters in a tragic shipwreck, not after deliverance. Yet the refrain dares to say: “It is well.” Not because the storm had ceased, but because Christ was present in the storm. This hymn is the perfect example of hope in a minor key: deep sorrow held in tension with deep trust. The mountain never moved — but grace gave strength to climb. The stumbling blocks weren’t removed — but God guided the mourner’s soul around them.
Verse 3 — The Funk Groove. The funk groove shouts it on the dance floor in Sly Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” Listen close: the verses confess struggle, betrayal, disappointment — “Lookin’ at the devil, grinnin’ at his gun.” That’s the blues truth, raw and unvarnished. But the chorus? Pure gratitude: “Thank you for lettin’ me be myself again.” Here’s the miracle: the verses admit the fight, but the chorus insists on joy. The beat itself is survival — defiant, funky joy in the face of despair. Funk turned survival into celebration. That’s hope in a minor key you can dance to.
Call and response stitches the whole thing together. The leader names the ache; the people answer with faith. The verse tells the truth; the refrain tells the gospel. That is how minor-key hope works — the moan and the shout in the same song.
IV. The Witness of the Blues and the Church
This theology has always lived in the blues. The verses moan pain, the choruses groove hope. B.B. King bends the guitar to cry, but the band keeps the rhythm alive. Son House tells of loss, but the people tap their feet. The groove says: “We’re still here.”
It has always lived in the Black church. The deacon’s prayer moans lament, but the congregation answers, “Yes, Lord.” The preacher names the ache, but the choir rises with a shout. In the old ring shouts and hush harbors, in storefront sanctuaries and cathedral pulpits, the same pattern holds: tell the truth about the night and keep a candle lit for the morning.
It lives in the spirituals: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child” — sorrow sung, survival embodied. It lives in gospel: James Cleveland’s “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired” — not because the journey was easy, but because God kept him walking. It lives in Thomas Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” written after the death of his wife and child — a prayer that pulled him, and us, through the dark. It lives in soul and R&B: Aretha Franklin’s “Mary Don’t You Weep” — a biblical lament turned into a celebration of God’s power. And it lives in funk and hip-hop: grooves that carry pain and joy in the same beat. Even when lyrics confess struggle, the rhythm itself testifies: “We’re still moving.”
Across all these voices — spiritual, hymn, blues, gospel, soul, funk, hip-hop — the testimony is the same: hope can shout in a minor key. The people of God have always found a way to turn survival into song.
V. The Turn – Preachers and People
This is the charge for the preacher. The celebrative challenge is not whether we can shout when the miracle happens. That’s easy. The challenge is whether we can teach people to shout when the mountain stays.
Shallow celebration has dangers: it distorts testimony, making it only about “success.” It silences lament, leaving sufferers out. It sets up despair, convincing some God has abandoned them. It quietly suggests that if God didn’t remove the problem, God did nothing at all.
But hope in a minor key reshapes the shout: it tells the truth about struggle; it honors endurance as miracle; it celebrates God’s presence in the climb. Paul and Silas sang before deliverance. James Cleveland sang, “I don’t believe He brought me this far to leave me.” That’s the minor-key shout: God’s grace is enough.
Practically, this means three things for pastors and congregations:
1) Make room for lament in worship — psalms of complaint, prayers of the people, silence that honors tears.
2) Broaden the testimony line — let survivors testify to the miracle of “I’m still here,” not only to the miracle of “It got fixed.”
3) Curate a soundtrack that carries both keys — sing the shouts and the moans, the hymns and the funk, the spirituals and the contemporary praise. Let every voice find its key.
VI. The Closing Shout – In Every Key
Some saints sing “It Is Well With My Soul.” Some sing “God’s Got a Blessing With My Name on It.” Some moan “Precious Lord, Take My Hand.” Some groove to Sly Stone’s “Thank You.” Some echo Jeremiah’s weary cry. Some whisper Jesus’ Gethsemane prayer: “Nevertheless, not my will but thine.”
And then there’s Mahalia Jackson — who could take any song, whether sorrow or shout, and fill it with the weight of survival and the fire of joy. When she sang “Trouble of the World” or “How I Got Over,” she carried the people through lament and into celebration without ever denying the pain. Mahalia proves that you can sing both moan and shout in the same breath — and that God receives them both.
That’s the witness we need: a church where every song is welcome. The moan of the spiritual, the resolve of the hymn, the groove of funk, the fire of gospel, the cry of the prophet, the prayer of Jesus Himself. Because the point is not the key — the point is the God who is working in every key.
So here’s the shout: In every key — major and minor — God is still working. Knowing that is how you shout even with a tear in your eye.
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