September 4, 2026 - Good Morning! It’s Friday, September 4.
As we close this week and move into the weekend, here’s a reprint of a Daily Devotion that first appeared in September of 2020. It’s one of my favorites. Hope you enjoy it.
In 1976, NASA launched a craft into space called Voyager I. It was powered by a computer with 68 kilobytes of memory. By comparison, the IPad I’m using to send out 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. Music by Bach, Beethoven, and Chuck Berry. And a song by an obscure gospel musician from Texas named Blind Willie Johnson.
William Johnson Jr. was born near Brenham in 1897. His mother died when he was just four years old. When he was seven, his father caught his stepmother with another man and beat her. In revenge she threw caustic lye in Willie’s face, leaving him blind. Willie learned to play the guitar and, as a young man, became an ordained minister. He played and sang and preached in churches and tent revivals all across his native state.
In 1929, Blind Willie recorded a record in a Dallas studio. It included a wordless piece about the crucifixion titled “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 - “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 bankrupt. After that he scratched out a meager living. In 1945 he was pastor of a tiny church in Beaumont. The church building burned and Johnson, who had been living in the back of his church, had nowhere else to go. For weeks he slept among the ruins. He contracted pneumonia and he died.
As of this morning, Voyager I is over 15 billion miles from Earth, and still moving on its journey through the universe, powered by that little computer. Twenty years ago it became the first man-made object to pass the farthest planet from our sun. Blind Willie Johnson was a penniless and unknown gospel preacher. And now his song about the Cross of Christ . . . has left the solar system.
Meet you back here on Monday,
David
cindertex50@yahoo.com
