Wake Up to Wonder: 22 Invitations to Amazement in the Everyday a 5-Day Reading Plan by Karen Wright MarshSample

Day Three: Raise Your Voice

Scripture: Isaiah 61:1-4, Proverbs 21:1-3, 7-8, 12-13

Fannie Lou Hamer (1917–1977) was an unknown share-cropper who’d grown up as the youngest of twenty children, she had been barely surviving for forty-five years, toiling on a White man’s farm way out in the Mississippi Delta. Then, in 1962, Mrs. Hamer heard a sermon—and the call of Jesus to fight for civil rights. Fannie Lou declared, “It’s all too easy to say, ‘Sure, I’m a Christian,’ and talk a big game . . . but if you’re not gonna get up and do something, God is not gonna put it in your lap.”

When her labors brought about pain, sacrifice, and persecution, Fannie Lou Hamer remained steadfast: Jesus himself demanded action in the struggle for human and civil rights. And so this woman spoke out with her body and her words. When the 1964 Freedom Summer Project brought hundreds of college student volunteers to Mississippi, they were sustained by Fannie Lou Hamer’s soulful songs, righteous rhetoric, and tactical action.

Determined to stand up for people of color who were excluded from the electoral process, the group headed to the 1964 National Democratic Convention to demand representation. There Fannie Lou’s bold rhetoric was broadcast on national television. Mrs. Hamer delivered an unforgettable account of oppression in the segregated South, of her own suffering and of her neighbors’ struggles. She was “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” as she famously declared, and she would not be denied in her call for justice for herself and for generations to come.

Fannie Lou Hamer paid a high price on behalf of others. In the face of opposition and intimidation, she stepped up willingly, declaring, “Christ was a revolutionary person, out there where it was happening. That’s what God is all about, and that’s where I get my strength.” The Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965, ushering in voting protections for all Americans. Mrs. Hamer and her beloved community had prevailed. While the journey toward justice did not end at the ballot box, the path forward remains illuminated by the example of Fannie Lou Hamer, a woman who raised her voice out of faith, love, and courage.

How does Fannie Lou’s notion of equality testify that our voices and bodies are not ours alone? By God’s grace, we are part of a family, a country, a world—and possess gifts to offer, including a voice that is created to speak for those silenced or displaced. Ask God where your voice or actions might extend His Gospel that brings dignity to all human life.