keep your lamps!

On Sunday we sang a new arrangement of a slave song called "Keep Your Lamps!" The exhortation of the song is to keep your lamps trimmed in preparation of the Lord's coming, and was taken from the gospel parable about the ten wise virgins who kept enough oil to keep their lamps burning (as opposed to the unwise ones who didn't prepare and thus, who let their lamps run out of oil).

Slave song. We used to call these spirituals, and I suppose that was one of those well-intended ways to soften what they were, which were songs of hope from folk in great torment and despair.

Excellent text for Advent I.