A friend mentioned Little Rock, Arkansas, in passing earlier today. Ever since she mentioned it, I’ve been singing the song Little Rock by Collin Raye.
Strangely enough, Little Rock is one of my favorite songs. It’s led by keys. It’s real. And raw. It’s the confession of a broken man longing to be whole again. It’s the heart of a guilty man longing to be free:
Well I know I've disappeared a time or two
And along the way I lost me and you
I needed a new town for my new start
Selling VCR's in Arkansas at a Wal-Mart
And I haven't had a drink in 19 days
My eyes are clear and bright without that haze
I like the preacher from the Church of Christ
Sorry that I cried when I talked to you last night
…
I don't know why I held it all inside
You must've thought I never even tried
You know your daddy told me when I left
"Jesus would forgive but a daddy don't forget"
…
Lying here upon this motel bed
My thoughts of you explode inside my head
And like a castle built upon the sand
I let love crumble in my hand
I think I'm on a roll here in Little Rock
I'm solid as a stone, baby, wait and see
I got just one small problem here in Little Rock
Without you, baby, I'm not me
No. I’ve never been married or struggled with alcoholism. I’ve never moved to Arkansas or worked at Wal-mart and I’ve never had anyone’s dad tell me that Jesus would forgive but a daddy don’t forget. But I have watched relationships and friendships crumble. And I have lay in bed with thoughts exploding in my head. And it’s so hard—knowing that something is broken—but being helpless to fix it—save for a humble, trying heart, and an honest, open spirit.
I don’t know if Little Rock tells a story that really happened or if it was written to be a good song. Either way, I find myself wondering: Did the person on the other end of last night’s crying forgive him?
Forgiveness is such a complicated thing. There is the person who has done wrong and the person who has been wronged. Sometimes the person who has done wrong doesn’t think that he/she has done wrong and sometimes the person who has been wronged thinks that he/she deserves the wrong. Sometimes the person who has done wrong doesn’t care to fix the wrong even if the person they have wronged is offering forgiveness. And sometimes offered forgiveness isn’t received for fear of strings attached—because sometimes strings are attached instead of flowing unconditionally.
For those of us who have grown up in church, we know that God offers unconditional love and grace—free, a gift, no strings attached. We also know that we should live as Jesus lived—with unconditional love and grace. Yet Jesus does something peculiar in John 5. The text reads:
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?” “Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.”
Did you see that? Jesus asked the man if he wanted to get well. In other words, in order for the man truly to be healed, the man first had to want to be healed. It wasn’t enough for Jesus alone to want to do the healing.
The man in Little Rock wants to be healed. He is singing his desire for forgiveness from the core of his being. Does the partner in the song forgive him? We don’t know. But I dare say yes—because I want to believe that his partner’s offer of forgiveness met his openness of receiving forgiveness at exactly the right moment…and then that they kept working at it together.
Do you want to be healed?
The pool = living water = dive in?
Do it? Accept it?
Grace, forgiveness, love.
Is there.
Do you want to be healed?
Amen.
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