Advent, Day 17: Yonder Come Day

Be attentive to this [God’s message] as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

—2 Peter 1:19b

LOOK: Bridge of Glory by Nicholas Roerich

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LISTEN: “Yonder Come Day,” African American spiritual | Performed by the Schola Cantorum of St. Peter’s in the Loop, dir. J. Michael Thompson, on Music for Advent II (2005)

Yonder come day, day is a-breakin’
Yonder come day, O my soul
Yonder come day, day is a-breakin’
Sun is a-risin’ in my soul

This spiritual originated in the nineteenth century in the enslaved Black communities of St. Simons Island off the coast of Georgia. Daybreak here can be read as a metaphor for salvation, happiness, death/beatification, or possibility. The latter was an especially common application, as the song was typically sung at Watch Night services, a New Year’s Eve tradition of Christian prayer, worship, song, and dance lasting from around 7 p.m. until midnight.

Recorded in 1963 in Los Angeles, the performance below is from the short film Georgia Sea Island Singers (1964), available on the DVD The Films of Bess Lomax Hawes (2003) and streaming on Kanopy:

The singers are, from left to right, John Davis, Bessie Jones, Emma Ramsay, Henry Morrison, and Mabel Hillary. They sing these lyrics:

Yonder come day
(O day)
Yonder come day
(O day)
Yonder come day
Day done broke
Into my soul

Yonder come day
(I was on my knees)
Yonder come day
(I was on my knees)
Yonder come day
(I was on my knees)
Yonder come day
Day done broke
Into my soul

. . . I heard him say . . .

. . . It’s a New Year’s day . . .

. . . Come on, child . . .

In 2016, Paul John Rudoi arranged “Yonder Come Day” together with “Hush, Hush,” “Steal Away,” and “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” creating a medley of spirituals in which “Yonder” is the through line. The medley is performed in the following video by the University of Oregon Chamber Choir, featuring soloist Alexa McCuen:

The coming of Christ is often described as the rising of a new day. That goes for his first advent in Bethlehem; his second, future advent; and his advent in the human heart, as people receive him and are flooded with spiritual light. “Yonder Come Day” is an apt song for remembering with gratitude one’s own conversion, that moment when Christ came to you and transformed you from the inside out.

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This post is part of a daily Advent series from December 2 to 24, 2023 (with Christmas to follow through January 6, 2024). View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.