Your Arms Too Short to Box with God

Your Arms Too Short to Box with God
A Soaring Celebration in Song and Dance
1976 Broadway Playbill
Music	Alex Bradford Micki Grant
Lyrics	Alex Bradford Micki Grant
Book	Vinnette Carroll
Basis	The Book of Matthew
Productions	1976 Broadway 1980 Broadway revival 1982 Broadway revival

Your Arms Too Short to Box with God: A Soaring Celebration in Song and Dance is a Broadway musical based on the Biblical Book of Matthew, with music and lyrics by Alex Bradford and a book by Vinnette Carroll, who also directed. Micki Grant was credited for "additional music and lyrics."

A 1980 revival was the Broadway debut of star Jennifer Holliday, then billed as Jennifer-Yvette Holliday.

Produced by Frankie Hewitt and the Shubert Organization, it opened December 22, 1976, at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre in New York City. It moved to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on November 16, 1977, and closed January 1, 1978, after 429 performances.

Your Arms Too Short to Box with God was revived twice on Broadway, first at the Ambassador Theatre and the Belasco Theatre (June 2–October 12, 1980), then at the Alvin Theatre (September 9–November 7, 1982). During the 1982 run, Al Green appeared with Patti Labelle in the show.

The phrase first appeared in James Weldon Johnson's poem "The Prodigal Son," which was published in his 1927 book of poems God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. The passage — which refers to an arm singular rather than arms plural — reads: