Song of the Day: Hard Earned Smile
(to listen for free go to http://www.davidlamotte.com/music/hard-earned-smile/ and click Track 12)
On Friday at the statewide NAACP convention I heard the state NAACP President, Rev. William Barber, say: “We don’t have to wait until we win to shout! We can shout now!” He reminded us of all we have to celebrate, even in the midst of such difficult times for our state.
It reminded me of a lovely story Paul Loeb tells in his book Soul of a Citizen. Paul was at an anti-Apartheid rally where Desmond Tutu was speaking in the ’80s. It was a very difficult time for that movement. The Apartheid regime still had the support of many nations and important international voices. People were dying. It didn’t look like a winning situation. When Tutu finished speaking, a reggae band took the stage, and as Tutu walked down the back steps of the stage he was dancing— grinning and boogying!
We are bearers of ‘Good News’ in a broken world. I find it is sometimes hard to reconcile the two halves of that sentence, but that is what we are called to—to choose to embrace hope and joy even in the midst of extremely difficult circumstances. Vaclav Havel said: “Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit.” It’s not about what is reasonable to predict, it is about pointing our lives toward faithfulness.
May you point your spirit toward hope today.
Hard Earned Smile
©1994 Lower Dryad Music
Words and Music by David LaMotteIf faces tell stories
And I think they do
There have been some hard chapters
In the story of you
There’s some dark and some lonely
In the lines around your eyes
A thousand nights’ tears
Promises and liesSo we sit at the diner
And talk until dawn
Lay it all on the table
Until the coffee’s all gone
All the hard people
You’ve known and you’ve been
Wounded and healed
And opened again(Chorus)
And you said it best when you played your guitar
From where you come, that isn’t what you are
I can hear the song ringing out over the miles
And there’s nothing so true as the hope
In a hard earned smileWe all have our trials
And our lessons to learn
If your dreams are on fire
Then your heart might get burned
But to choose to be strong
And have courage to heal
Lends truth to your song
And the hope that I feel(Chorus)
