Download a digital copy (1.5 MB) - Open Door Community

The Sacraments of Hospitality ˜ 257
Zechariah’s prophecy I was happily surprised to find a connection to good memories
of my days in college. Every day at morning prayer we sang a beautiful setting
of Zechariah’s prophecy:
Blessed be God who has visited and redeemed us.
God has given us salvation
By the forgiveness of our sins.
Through the tender mercy of our God,
The Dayspring from on high has visited us,
To give light to them that dwell in darkness,
And in the shadow of death
To guide our feet into the way of peace.
In my college days, the words had no particular meaning, and I loved them
only because the music was so beautiful and I loved to sing. But last November,
when we chose “Dayspring” as the name of our farm, those words all of a sudden
became meaningful, and I was glad that I had sung them daily for four years
because the words came back so readily.
You see, names are important. The name “Dorothy Day” would not have
called to mind anything from my past. Names are important. The name “John”
freed Zechariah to proclaim his prophecy. You may remember that Zechariah
did not believe that he and his elderly wife, Elizabeth, could have a child. Because
he doubted the angel’s promise that a child named John would be born,
Zechariah was struck speechless. For nine months he could not talk. It was only
after the baby was born and Zechariah wrote, “His name is John,” that the gift
of speech returned. Zechariah’s first words were the beautiful prophecy about his
son John, who would prepare the way of the Lord. John means “God is gracious.”
Indeed, God has been gracious to us in the gift of Dayspring Farm.
˜ ˜ ˜
My father’s name is John. When I was a small child living in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida, he preached a sermon on Christmas Day entitled “The Dayspring.”
God was gracious to me in giving me my father, because while today we
have our struggles relating to each other, my dad, John Dede, helped prepare the
way of the Lord for me.
In that Christmas Day sermon, my dad talked about visitation—a word that
for me has come to be jam-packed with meaning. At that time I was probably
only three years old. My dad said, “The Dayspring has visited us, poor and humble
though we may be.” And we were a poor and humble congregation. In the
early 1960s, my father had a mission church of Black folk in Fort Lauderdale.
On that Christmas Day there were six white people in a church of Black sisters