Reaching for the skies: I have a dream 50 years on

WHEN I was six, I was in a children’s gospel choir. Most of the songs we sang were standards such as ‘Jesus Loves the Little Children’ or ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ — not complicated stuff to understand.

But there was one song that we sang that was always a head scratcher for me. This was one of those “walking songs”, the ones you march into the sanctuary to. The words were easy enough, a simple refrain repeated over and over: “We’re marching, to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion/We’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God.”

The first few times we sang this song, I just repeated the lines as requested and tried not to trip over my robe. But after a few weeks, the tune really started bothering me. First, I thought to myself, who is this guy “Zion” who lives in God’s city? Or, if Zion’s a place, how come we never get there? Sunday after Sunday, week after week, month after month, we were always... marching. But for some reason, we never, ever arrived.