Some say we're born into the grave

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.”

- Ezekiel 37:1-14

This is one of the great stories of the Bible. One year at a church Halloween party, I heard someone tell it to a group of kids, sitting in darkness, complete with sound effects (a bunch of drumsticks in a box rattling around). And, of course, we all know the old spiritual about “dem dry bones”—not to mention the bleak, hard-rockin’, excellent Alice in Chains song.

But what is the main point of this story? To what does Ezekiel’s vision point? Well, the story isn’t actually about physical death, for one thing—it’s about spiritual death. It’s about a whole people feeling cut off and hopeless. And there’s a promise here that all is not lost—God will restore their hope. But when?

The Gospel reading paired with this one is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this story isn’t about physical death, either—at least, not exclusively. There are a million little resurrections happening in our lives every day, from a healed injury to a rekindled friendship to a new perspective. Sometimes these resurrections may seem to take too long—but they do come. Even when everything seems hopeless, hope is on the way.

I only ask, "May I share dinner with you?"

When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.” He was speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him.

- John 6:60-71

It’s happening: do you feel it? The tension is ramping up. Somebody is close to being fed up. Somebody is starting to think that this Jesus movement is getting too big—that maybe the man they’ve followed all this time isn’t really in control. Doubt has crept in, and soon it will strike.

Meanwhile, those who would stay loyal can’t imagine any other possibility. If they only knew … but they will know soon enough. They, also, will drink a long, slow draught from the same cup.

Here’s Son Lux with “Betray.”

And if you don't ask questions, you won't know why

Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me; answer me speedily in the day when I call. For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is stricken and withered like grass; I am too wasted to eat my bread. Because of my loud groaning my bones cling to my skin.

I am like an owl of the wilderness, like a little owl of the waste places. I lie awake; I am like a lonely bird on the housetop. All day long my enemies taunt me; those who deride me use my name for a curse. For I eat ashes like bread, and mingle tears with my drink, because of your indignation and anger; for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside. My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass.

But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever; your name endures to all generations. You will rise up and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to favor it; the appointed time has come. For your servants hold its stones dear, and have pity on its dust. The nations will fear the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth your glory. For the Lord will build up Zion; he will appear in his glory. He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and will not despise their prayer.

Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height, from heaven the Lord looked at the earth, to hear the groans of the prisoners, to set free those who were doomed to die; so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion, and his praise in Jerusalem, when peoples gather together, and kingdoms, to worship the Lord. He has broken my strength in midcourse; he has shortened my days. “O my God,” I say, “do not take me away at the midpoint of my life, you whose years endure throughout all generations.”

Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away; but you are the same, and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.

- Psalm 102

I saw a church reader board the other day that says, “Faith is a journey, not a guilt trip.” That’s certainly been true for me. Like the Psalmist, I sometimes cry out to God. At other times, I go along blithely forgetting about God. At still others, God and I walk silently together, not speaking much but totally aware of each other’s presence.

Lent has been like all three of these things for me this year. I cried out in indignation at the disasters in Japan and at political turmoil here in the U.S. Some mornings, I thought, “Oh no, do I have to write again today?” But most often of all, I’ve felt God as a constant companion on my travels. I need this most of all: I need to be able to ask God questions, and not just when I'm desperate. But sometimes I feel desperate, too, and I know God understands.

I’m a sucker for great, catchy pop songs, even if they were never really hits to begin with. This song was a hit at one Texas radio station in the summer of 2001. But I love the minor key and the desperation of it; it feels like a psalm to me. Here’s “Pray” by Tina Cousins.

Before you were born, someone kicked in the door

Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.
I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.
More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause; many are those who would destroy me, my enemies who accuse me falsely. What I did not steal must I now restore?

O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.
Do not let those who hope in you be put to shame because of me, O Lord God of hosts; do not let those who seek you be dishonored because of me, O God of Israel.
It is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that shame has covered my face.
I have become a stranger to my kindred, an alien to my mother's children.

It is zeal for your house that has consumed me; the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.
When I humbled my soul with fasting, they insulted me for doing so.
When I made sackcloth my clothing, I became a byword to them.
I am the subject of gossip for those who sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs about me.

But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me.
With your faithful help rescue me from sinking in the mire; let me be delivered from my enemies and from the deep waters.
Do not let the flood sweep over me, or the deep swallow me up, or the Pit close its mouth over me.

Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good; according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
Do not hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress—make haste to answer me.
Draw near to me, redeem me, set me free because of my enemies.
You know the insults I receive, and my shame and dishonor; my foes are all known to you.

Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.
They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.
Let their table be a trap for them, a snare for their allies.
Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see, and make their loins tremble continually.

- Psalm 69:1-23

First of all, today I defer to my colleague, the Rev. Karen Haig.

“Before You Were Born” by Toad the Wet Sprocket is a song about a person who may always have felt like this Psalmist. I couldn’t find the studio version, so here’s a live version, and also the lyrics.

What strikes me most about the song is that there is apparently a community of people walking with the subject through his pain on the road to redemption: “Just keep on there breathing/ We’ll help you down the long, long road back home.”

I am the silent one inside

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law—indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.

- Romans 8:1-11

I don’t like the dualism of this passage; it operates under the Pauline assumption that everything to do with physical matter is impure, while everything spiritual is pure. This was a Greek idea that had begun to affect Judaism and took strong hold in Christianity. But the Hebrew idea is that the body and spirit cannot be treated as separate things, because it is in their working together that the miracle of life occurs. And since Christianity is based on God coming into bodily form, how can we possibly keep the two separate?

My father-in-law said to me the other day, “I have an analogy for this. The body is the hardware. The mind is the software. The soul is the experience of the user interacting with the other two.” That’s much better.

Paul begins to redeem himself in verse 9: “But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you.” Then he lapses back into dualism by asserting that some people are still “in the flesh” because they don’t have “the Spirit of Christ.” It reminds me of that bumper sticker: “Got Jesus?” As if we could go to the store, buy some Jesus, and drink it.

Yet every week, I go to the altar rail and consume the Body and Blood of Christ. There’s a deep mystery at work here. Acclimated to having this meal every Sunday, if I miss a week, I notice. It’s not unlike going to Grandma’s house every single Sunday—there’s a relationship there that I need to keep fostering. But in this case, that relationship will never end.

In the meantime, it’s still Lent, the weather’s still lousy, and spring seems worlds away. At this time of year, it’s easy for me to fall into self-doubt and become my own worst enemy. So back to church I go—back for another round of bread and wine, of silent prayer, of communal prayer and singing, of visiting with the other travelers on the road. Time to engage the mysteries yet again. And yet again, I will feel that thrill of seeing something of what God sees—in me, in those I love, and in the world.

Here’s Paula Cole with a song for emerging from the cocoon: “Me.” (And what a fabulous video, too!)

I do what I want to do ... no, wait ... I don't do what I do when I want ... no ... I do the do when I do the don't ... meh!

Forgiveness

Did what is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin.

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

- Romans 7:13-25

I remember hearing this passage in church when I was a kid. My best friend Trav and I sat in the front row and giggled throughout, much to the annoyance of my parents. At home, we got out a Bible and read it again. We challenged each other to read it five times fast. We couldn’t make head nor tails of it, but we knew it sounded hilarious. We wanted to shout, “Wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this convoluted sentence structure?”

The passage continued to elicit giggles from me well into high school. One night at summer camp, each of the campers was asked to share a passage of scripture that was meaningful to us. I thought I’d lighten the mood a bit, so I read this passage and received, to my delight, many more chuckles from my fellow campers. But Father Phil, the head of the camp, smiled knowingly: “You may think it’s funny now, but once you understand it, you won’t find it funny at all.”

When we’ve lived long enough, we do understand it. No matter how hard we try, we can’t “be good.” We continue to do things wrong. We continue to mess up—not only by accident, but even willfully—all the time. We justify our actions one way or another, and then we feel awful when we suffer the consequences. Are we sorrier for the action, or for the consequences?

Yet the most important line in the passage is this one: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” We have nothing to fear, because Jesus knows our hearts and understands our struggles. Each time we fall down, we can get back up again, not with groveling, but with dignity … because we are God’s beloved children.

Is there any greater reason to forgive others than the realization that we ourselves have been forgiven?

Here’s Susan Werner with the best song I know on the topic … “Forgiveness.”

Teach your parents well

And when you tell this people all these words, and they say to you, “Why has the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is the sin that we have committed against the Lord our God?” then you shall say to them: It is because your ancestors have forsaken me, says the Lord, and have gone after other gods and have served and worshiped them, and have forsaken me and have not kept my law; and because you have behaved worse than your ancestors, for here you are, every one of you, following your stubborn evil will, refusing to listen to me. Therefore I will hurl you out of this land into a land that neither you nor your ancestors have known, and there you shall serve other gods day and night, for I will show you no favor.

Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, “As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt,” but “As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.” For I will bring them back to their own land that I gave to their ancestors. I am now sending for many fishermen, says the Lord, and they shall catch them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the clefts of the rocks.

For my eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from my presence, nor is their iniquity concealed from my sight. And I will doubly repay their iniquity and their sin, because they have polluted my land with the carcasses of their detestable idols, and have filled my inheritance with their abominations. O Lord, my strength and my stronghold, my refuge in the day of trouble, to you shall the nations come from the ends of the earth and say: Our ancestors have inherited nothing but lies, worthless things in which there is no profit. Can mortals make for themselves gods? Such are no gods! “Therefore I am surely going to teach them, this time I am going to teach them my power and my might, and they shall know that my name is the Lord.”

 - Jeremiah 16:10-21

The writings of the Hebrew prophets are chock full of scenes like this: God is angry, angry, angry, and is going to punish us! Yet that judgment is always placed beside a passage of mercy—usually God promising to bring the people back after their exile. I find that the best way to handle passages like this is to look through the lens of parenthood. Doubtless, people anthropomorphized God in the first place by looking through that lens.

My daughter Sarah threw a fit over something at bedtime. She wanted me to read her a comic book. I’d had a long day, and for some reason I didn’t want to read her a comic book. I asked her to pick out something else. And that’s when the screaming began.

So I took away her story—that is, I said I would read to her tomorrow night, but not tonight. Stories are central to our bedtime routine, and I never like to take them away, but it was the right thing to do. We moved on to the next step in her routine, when Christy reads her a story. After that comes “quiet time,” three minutes of silence often punctuated by thoughts about Sarah’s day.

As I sat down for quiet time, Sarah said, “Dad, I’m really sorry.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t like taking your stories away. But sometimes Mommy and I take things away from you to teach you how to control your emotions.”

“I know,” Sarah replied.

“You know,” I said, “Sometimes your emotions—especially anger and frustration—can become so strong that it feels like they’re controlling you.”

Sarah smiled. “Instead of you controlling them!” She got it.

I said, “Sometimes it feels like they sneak up behind you and grab you by the throat and try to choke you!” That got a good laugh. “Grownups deal with that, too. We also have a hard time controlling our emotions sometimes. But it’s something you’ll get better and better at as you grow up, and it’s Mommy’s and my job to help you.”

It was a wonderful conversation. Suddenly that screaming fit seemed a world away. And then, in the silence that followed, Sarah said, “Dad, I have a question to ask you.”

“Yes, Sarah?”

“Why don’t you like to read me comic books?”

Huh. That was a really good question. And I didn’t have a really good answer. Certainly I have the right to say, “No, I don’t want to read that--let’s read something else.” But would it have killed me to read her a comic book? Probably not.

Here are Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with a classic parenting song: “Teach Your Children.” Of course, children teach their parents, too.

Good and right and true

For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, "Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." – Ephesians 5:8-14

Sometimes miracles happen in an instant. Other times, I only look back years later and realize how blind I used to be. In preparing for the move, I’ve been scanning shoeboxes full of old letters, so I can recycle the paper without losing the words themselves. As I re-read the letters people wrote me, re-imagine what I must have written between those letters, and live again the memories of my time with these people, I see how much I’ve grown and matured. I was blind about a good many things, mostly about the ways I protected myself and got what I wanted at the expense of others.  In my own little way, was I all that different from these oil execs? I’ve never had the power to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses I don’t deserve. But I have sometimes been reckless with other people’s hearts.

Today this epistle from Ephesians is paired with chapter 9 from John’s Gospel, the story of Jesus healing the man born blind. That’s worth a read, too … and maybe a re-read, because there’s so much packed into it.

It’s all about moving from darkness to light, from blindness to sight. In the end, who is called blind? The Pharisees. Rather than allowing Jesus to deepen their understanding of God, they get hung up on technicalities and stuck in circular logic: How could a man of God heal someone on the Sabbath? A good man wouldn’t do any work on the Sabbath, so Jesus must not be a good man. A sinful man couldn’t heal someone’s blindness. Therefore, either this isn’t the same man as the one who was born blind (despite his insistence that he was), or he’s been faking blindness his entire life. QED. Never mind the much more straightforward, Ockham’s-razor-applied argument: Jesus actually did heal the man, and doing good things for people who need it is much more important than any number of well-meaning ritual observances. God forbid that we have to rearrange our priorities!

Another way I know I’ve been blind is that I have usually tried to play it safe. I’m not naturally an adventurous person. So when it comes to packing up my life and my family and moving to Virginia this summer to attend seminary, naturally, I’m scared. But I’m also convinced it’s the right thing to do. This adventure will be a way of stepping from the darkness of safety and security into the risky light of God’s grace, so that amazing things can happen … things I never could have made happen on my own.

John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace” as a penitent former slave-trader. What sort of hymn might a penitent oil executive write? What revelations on grace are still out there for you or me to discover and tell the world about? May we all continue to head toward the light that reveals even our deepest fears, knowing that whatever is good and right and true is that which saves us.

I'm free to decide

Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 – Romans 6:12-23

At first this passage may seem like a scary bit of Orwellian doublethink: slavery is freedom. But consider that Paul is constrasting two different types of slavery: slavery to that which is not God, and slavery to God. Slavery to the other is true slavery: we are controlled by our moment-to-moment urges regardless of the consequences. We might score a victory of willpower here or there, but ultimately, we can’t escape human nature. We will screw up again.

What Paul calls being “enslaved to God,” he’s not talking about slavery at all, but rather, freely chosen obligation. Am I enslaved to my family? Only if I view my lifelong commitments to them as a loathsome burden—which I may do in a moment of weakness, but certainly not over the long haul.

It’s the same with God. If I understand myself to have been forgiven for everything I’ve ever done wrong and ever will do wrong, I have a choice. I can take advantage of God’s generosity by doing whatever I feel like, regardless of how it may hurt others. But if I do, this will enslave me and strain my relationship with the all-forgiving God. On the other hand, I can do my best, knowing that my best is never perfect, and be in relationship with God and the people in my life day by day. Either way, I’m forgiven. But this way leads to happiness. What good is forgiveness without happiness?

Many Christians concern a lot of their time with how these dynamics play out in an “afterlife.” I don’t know about an afterlife, but I am counting on some sort of “outside life,” not chronologically later than my time on earth, but at a remove from it in both space and time. If we can indeed meet God face to face, I want to have been communicating with God during my time on earth. I figure I’ll find it easier to recognize and understand God when the time—er, when the not-time—comes. But in the meantime, I’m “Free to Decide.” Here are the Cranberries.

My place is of the sun, and this place is of the dark

They answered him, "We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, "You will be made free'?"

Jesus answered them, "Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word. I declare what I have seen in the Father's presence; as for you, you should do what you have heard from the Father."

They answered him, "Abraham is our father."

Jesus said to them, "If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing what Abraham did, but now you are trying to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are indeed doing what your father does."

They said to him, "We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself."

Jesus said to them, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God."

- John 8:33-47

Here’s another passage in which Jesus paints a bleak picture of our hope for reunion with God. Once again, he’s saying that it’s God’s action that saves us, not our own. We are slaves to that which keeps us from being in full communion with God. Yet there is still much we can do. One who is drowning can choose not to struggle and kick at the rescuer—even when the rescuer’s intent is to drown with us, thus making every pathway, even death, safe for us.
 

One of my favorite songs by the Indigo Girls is “Prince of Darkness.” I couldn’t find the studio recording on YouTube, so here’s a live version; the lyrics can be found here.

Hidden toward the end of the song as backup vocals are the lyrics, “By grace, we grow stronger.” We are saved a little bit at a time, keeping us turning, turning, turning back to God. Examples of grace show up in this song: the father giving the daughter money, the mother staying with her for days. These are images of God reaching out to us as we struggle in a broken world of pain, addiction, and violence. I have heard it said that Christians are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world. Yet every one of us sometimes gets swept up in the dramatic appeal of sin.

This is an empowering song. When I am tempted to make a destructive choice, I pray for the grace to notice in advance so I can say, “My place is of the sun, and this place is of the dark/ And I do not feel the romance, I do not catch the spark … and I will not be a pawn for the Prince of Darkness any longer.” And then I can turn in a new direction.