THE GOSPEL IN SONG — BLIND WILLIE JOHNSON
Before the gospel was polished, before it was platformed and programmed, it stood on street corners and cried out with a rough voice and a wounded heart. That is where blues gospel was born—not in comfort, but in suffering; not in wealth, but in want. And few embodied that union of sorrow and faith more honestly than Blind Willie Johnson. (You can still listen to his incredible music on YouTube and Apple Music among other places).
Blind Willie did not sing about Jesus from a distance. He sang like a man who needed Him. His voice was gravel and fire, cracked with pain and urgency, as if every note might be his last sermon. When he sang “Jesus make up my dying bed,” it was not poetry—it was prayer. The blues, in his hands, became a lament lifted toward heaven.
Scripture never pretends suffering doesn’t exist. The Bible gives us lament as worship. “Out of the depths I have cried to You, O LORD” (Psalm 130:1). That is blues theology. Not denial. Not pretense. Just truth spoken Godward. Blind Willie’s music lived in those depths. He preached Christ not as a luxury for the comfortable, but as hope for the broken.
Though blind from childhood, he saw something many with sight miss. He knew the nearness of God in affliction. “The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit” (Psalm 34:18). His songs were sermons sung through scars. He stood on sidewalks and street corners the way prophets once stood at city gates—uninvited, uncelebrated, yet faithful.
He died poor. His house burned. He was left exposed, sick, forgotten by the world. Yet heaven never forgot him. Long after his death, his voice would travel farther than he ever did—literally sent into space, a gospel cry carried beyond the stars. “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). God has a way of honoring faithfulness the world overlooks.
Blues gospel reminds us that Christianity did not begin as respectable. It began with a crucified Savior, rejected, despised, acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). Blind Willie Johnson sang in that same key. No polish. No prosperity. Just Jesus—and Him crucified—echoing through pain and hope intertwined.
And maybe that is why his music still moves us. It tells the truth. The gospel does not erase suffering, but it sings through it. Christ does not promise ease, but presence. “In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).
The blues were never the enemy of faith. They were its cry. And Blind Willie Johnson reminds us that sometimes the purest worship sounds like a groan set to grace.
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Lord Jesus, thank You for meeting us in our sorrow and giving us songs even in the night. Teach me to worship You honestly—to bring You my pain as well as my praise. Let my life, like those old gospel blues, tell the truth and still point to hope. Amen.
BDD
