My Country, 'Tis of Thee

On Easter Sunday, 1939, contralto Marian Anderson stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and opened her mouth to sing. The Daughters of the American Revolution had refused to let her perform at Constitution Hall because she was Black. They locked the doors of the most prestigious concert venue in Washington and told her she was not welcome.

So Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization, and the Secretary of the Interior invited Anderson to sing outdoors instead. Seventy-five thousand people gathered on the National Mall that afternoon. Millions more listened on the radio. And the first words Marian Anderson sang were these: "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing."

A woman told she could not enter a building sang about freedom on the open steps of a memorial to liberation. She did not protest with anger. She did not shrink in defeat. She simply sang — and her voice, rich and uncontainable, carried across that crowd like something no locked door could ever hold back.

The Apostle Paul wrote from a Roman prison, "The word of God is not chained" (2 Timothy 2:9). There is a freedom that no institution can grant and no barrier can revoke. The Almighty does not need our permission to set His people free. He does not wait for doors to open. He gives His children a song, and the song itself becomes the open sky.

When God sets you free, no building is big enough to contain it.