The Choir That Sang Over Bare Concrete

In 1958, the congregation of Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem gathered not in their grand sanctuary but in the basement of a half-finished building on West 138th Street. The old church had been demolished. The new one existed only as steel beams, raw concrete, and blueprints rolled out on sawhorses. Pastor Adam Clayton Powell Sr. had died before seeing the project through. His son carried it forward.

That Sunday, the choir director lined up forty voices along the unfinished foundation wall. No stained glass filtered the light — just bare bulbs strung on extension cords. No organ filled the space — just a single upright piano wheeled in from a member's apartment. And when those forty voices lifted the doxology, the sound bounced off exposed concrete and open sky in a way no finished cathedral could replicate. Some in the congregation wept. Others shouted. Most did both.

They were not celebrating a completed building. They were celebrating that God had brought them far enough to begin again.

This is the moment Ezra captures. The exiles had returned from Babylon, and the foundation — only the foundation — of the new temple was laid. The older priests wept, remembering Solomon's glory. The younger ones shouted, seeing promise in bare stone. And together, their voices became one sound: "He is good; His love toward Israel endures forever." Sometimes the most honest worship happens not when the work is finished, but when the foundation finally holds weight.