Lenten Meditations: March 29

His life became more than he could take
He found a bad habit he couldn’t break
Nothing could tame him and nothing could hold him
He only took the pills when the doctor told him
Looking too hard for the something sweet
To make his life feel less incomplete
What in the hell are you going to do
When the world has made its mind up about you?
He was a liar, but not a fraud
Living proof that there was no God
Just the Devil, stiff as a rod
A slave to a sugartooth
– from Brandi Carlile’s song Sugartooth

Reflection

This lyric, from Brandi Carlile’s album By The Way, I Forgive You gets me every time. I think we can all relate to wanting so badly to just feel that we’re a part of something, that our lives matter – and being met by a world that thinks it knows us and has decided that it doesn’t need what we have. Hearing Carlile sing Sugartooth brings me right to that space, the injustice of it, the aloneness.

In this Lenten season I wonder: who have I made my mind up about? Who am I not seeing? When am I stiff as a rod?

Prayer

God, we pray for all those who feel invisible and left behind. We pray for all to be brought into love and community. We pray to be the ones who see, and speak, and act, and touch love into being. We pray to be brave enough to enter those spaces that testify to your nonexistence and say the world has not given up on you. Help us to be the hope, God. Amen.