Hope for the Road

Last week I saw one of my favorite story-tellers in concert, and he played a song I had heard before (and really like) called "Carry the Fire." It's a song about hope and holding onto that hope when all seems lost. Even if it's the most feeble, fraying thread to which you cling, there is still hope. The chorus goes...

Sing on, sing on,
When your hope is gone
Sing on, sing on.

But hearing it live, the song spoke to me in a deeper way because the songwriter explained that he had been inspired to write it after reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road."

Wow. If you have ever read "The Road" or any of McCarthy's other works, then "wow" is sufficient. For those who are less familiar with McCarthy's catalogue, "The Road" follows a man and his boy on their journey through post-apocalyptic America, a journey riddled with cannibalistic killers, uninterrupted suffering, perpetual gnawing hunger, and horrifying nothingness. Man's vilest nightmares are reality. Life is black as the blackest night. Terrified eyes dart back and forth, searching for any sign of relief on the horizon, trying to remain hidden from those who hunt them.  But there's nothing and no one. Each new day brings more of the same: despair, suffering, and death. And it is absolutely gut-wrenching watching this father, desperately clinging to the hope of something better, fighting tooth-and-nail to deliver his son from this hell. All he can do is try to make his way toward the coast and hope that the rumors are true that there is something better waiting for them there.

It is very good news when you understand that the author of hope writes his song while he is intimately acquainted with the deepest and darkest evil imaginable. See where we're going here?

All of us men can identify with McCarthy's man on the road. We had dreams for what our lives would look like, but something happened along the way. Our course changed. Some unwelcome visitor happened upon our traveling party -- be it sickness, failed career, failed relationship, death of a loved one, an unsettling awareness of our own inadequacy, etc. -- and life has become a nightmare. Like the man and his boy, we (some of us with a wife and children in tow) are lost and scared as hell.

The Gospel speaks to men when they find themselves here. In the American South we do a really good job of prettying up the Gospel. It's become so sanitized in fact that exposing it to real sin "just wouldn't be proper." From wearing our Sunday best to an unspoken rule that it's not OK to admit that you are not OK, it's easy to believe the lie that your real struggles are too foul for the Gospel. As if the Gospel were some ticket into high society or like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. No, the Gospel is good news for the dirtiest and weariest of travelers. There is no sickness, no struggle, no evil that God left unaddressed when he dealt with sin in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And that same other-worldly power is at work in those who believe in the hope that is found in Jesus; the hope that leads a man to brave a fallen and sin-infested world in an effort to bring his family to the proverbial coast, hoping that God was telling the truth. That at the end of this life, there is a more real existence than the mess he sees here. Something eternal and secure. The Apostle Paul believed in such a hope. He wrote this encouragement to his fellow travelers on the road:

"Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."


What trouble or personal sin are you tempted to believe is beyond the all-encompassing hope and power of the Gospel?

It's not.

Chopping Wood

My wife and I bought our first house in March. We live in an older neighborhood beneath a great tree canopy. I love it. We are minutes from downtown and seconds from adventures in the wild kingdom that is our backyard. Last weekend was my first attempt at cultivating the beauty and order of this kingdom, using my hatchet, handsaw, and pole saw (insert throaty grunts here...the illustration to the left is an artist's rendering of what I looked like...in my own mind...minus the ox).

After consulting with a friend in the landscaping business, I chopped down a couple of precariously-positioned trees and cleaned up many others by removing a myriad of limbs. By the time I was through, I was wiping the sweat from my brow, staring proudly at my backyard and the massive pile of leafy wood that littered my lawn. I let this sea of branches sit for a couple of days, and then I returned to chop it all up, saving what I could for firewood and leaving the rest on the curb for the city to collect.

It was in the chopping that I noticed something significant: a drastic transformation had occurred. Something was different. On Friday, I expended a massive amount of energy wrestling these proud branches from their high perches. Healthy. Full. Strong. Now, on Sunday, I chopped and sawed with ease through these woody corpses, mere shells of their former glory. More significantly, I realized that I am like these branches. Jesus said:

As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. ...These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:4-11)

Despite all of my glory (whether real or merely perceived!), I am just a branch. Remove me from the tree, and you will discover that I have no power, merit, beauty, or life of my own. We as men want so badly to present to the world that we are big ole redwoods, strong, proud, and self-sufficient. But we aren't; we have to tap into something bigger than ourselves for sustenance and life.

Take some time to consider where you seek life and identity. Respect? Prestige? Power? Wealth? Knowledge? Physical appearance? Athletic ability? When you pour that stuff into your veins, do you bear fruit and live joyfully? Or do you wither up, hollowed out and lifeless?