Every Shut Eye Ain't Sleep and Every Good Bye Ain't Gone.
5 Generations of the Laney family. Photo Credit: Sharon Laney (2018)
Bishop Clarence Laney, Jr., a native of Selma, North Carolina, is a pastor, educator, and community leader with a lifelong commitment to faith, justice, and service. For 30 years, he has served as pastor of Monument of Faith Church in Durham, North Carolina. He holds a Doctor of Ministry from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and a Master of Divinity from Duke Divinity School. He also serves as Bishop of the North Carolina Church of God of Prophecy Region #3, overseeing 26 churches, and was inducted into Morehouse College’s prestigious Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers in 2021. His leadership reflects a deep commitment to the Black Church, ecumenical collaboration, and neighborhood transformation. We are honored to have Bishop Laney serve on the Board of Directors of BLK South. Learn More
My paternal grandmother Bea did not hold a seminary degree, but she held a deep theology and understanding of God. Her theology came out in kitchens and on front porches, in the sayings she passed down. Grandma Bea wise in a world that rarely wanted to hear a Black women’s voice had the courage to still speak. Maybe not in a pulpit or a filled arena but she spoke loud in her family and community. She spoke in her thoughts words and deeds. One of her favorites saying was this: "Every shut eye ain't sleep, and every goodbye ain't gone." She usually said it with a knowing look. It was a warning and a comfort in one breath. The warning: do not trust surfaces, because what looks quiet may be watching. The comfort: do not surrender to endings, because what looks finished may not be done. Both saying rest on one conviction. Things are not always as they seem.
The first half of the saying is about discernment. Grandma warned us that our sight is shallow. When Samuel looked over Jesse's sons, he was ready to anoint the tallest one. But God corrected him: "for man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart" (1 Samuel 16:7). The one who seem to matter least, David out in the field with the sheep, was the one God had chosen. Who are the ones that matter the least among us? Who are those we easily pass by and ignore, God sees them because God's eyes never close. The psalmist promises that "God who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep" (Psalm 121:4). In seasons when God’s eyes seem closed, we are tempted to believe God has dozed off on our situation. Grandma Bea knew better. A shut eye in heaven is not a sleeping God.
The second half of the saying is about hope. Some goodbyes are not endings. Joseph's brothers said goodbye to him at the bottom of a pit. They assumed they had gotten rid of him. Years later he stood before them in Egypt and said, "ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good" (Genesis 50:20). What they had sent away came back as their deliverance. History keeps repeating Joseph's story. In 1955, Mississippi meant to bury Emmett Till and his story with him. Instead, Mamie Till-Mobley insisted on an open casket, and her son's face stirred a movement. In 2022, nearly seventy years later, a federal anti-lynching law was signed bearing his name. Medgar Evers was shot down in his own driveway in 1963, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed on a Memphis balcony in 1968. Yet their dream still marches in every voter registration drive and every pulpit that dares to speak truth to power. Here in Durham, urban renewal bulldozed much of Hayti, but its spirit still lives on at the Hayti Heritage Center. As the early church father Tertullian put it, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church." What the world buries, God often plants.
What does Grandmother Bea's proverb ask of us today? It asks us to be careful with our conclusions. The quiet member may be carrying more than we know. The community the world has written off may be wide awake and organizing. The situation that looks dead may simply be waiting on the word of Jesus, who said of Jairus's daughter, "the damsel is not dead, but sleeps" (Mark 5:39). It also asks us to grieve as people of hope. We do not deny our losses, but we refuse to let a goodbye have the final word. The God who neither slumbers nor sleeps is the same God who raises the dead. Things are not always as they seem. Thank God for that.
Reflection Questions:
Who are the people or communities we tend to overlook or underestimate, and what might God be inviting us to see differently?
Where in your life or community have you experienced something that seemed like an ending but became the beginning of something new?
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