There are always reasons to pick from, viable excuses to leave the presence of God. And they always lead to destruction. (Joshua Dubois in The President's Devotional, August 14).
"Kumbaya" or "Kumbayah" or "Cumbaya" (Gullah, "Come By Here" — "Kum ba yah") — is a spiritual song first recorded in the 1920s. It became a standard campfire song in Scouting and summer camps, and enjoyed broader popularity during the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
The song is originally a simple appeal to a deity to come and help those in need, but more recently, it also is cited or alluded to in satirical or cynical ways that suggest false moralizing, hypocrisy, or naively optimistic views of the world and human nature. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumbaya).
This morning speaking of the relatively peaceful night in the wake of the slaying of 18 year old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Rev. Al Sharpton warned that emotions and feelings of injustice are deep and should not be overly discounted. He warned against too easily finding the night of relative peace a cause to make facile shifts to kumbaya--that is, don't be fickle in embracing optimism. We are left to conclude that being a Christian does not mean you must be flat-out silly. A genuine call for kumbaya is too momentous and serious for that. The verse from Ephesians quoted above says "...forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." Surely God was realistic and inclusive in comprehending Christ's suffering. We must sometimes come to kumbaya down a painful trail of tears.
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