Daily Word of Grace # 195 (December 14, 2020)
I have always been a fan of Simon and Garfunkel, whose albums made many a rotation on my parents’ record player when I was very young. Their 1968 album Bookends has a poignant and beautiful song called “America” about a couple traveling together on a bus—“Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces. She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy. I said, be careful, his bowtie is really a camera. Toss me a cigarette, I think there’s one in my raincoat. We smoked the last one an hour ago. So I looked at the scenery. She read her magazine. And the moon rose over an open field.” Then in the final verse he sings about why they are on the bus ride together in the first place: “Cathy, I’m lost, I said though I knew she was sleeping. I’m empty and aching and I don’t know why. Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike. They’ve all come to look for America, all come to look for America, all come to look for America.” You can know what bus you are on, know who you are riding the bus with, and even know the destination of that bus—and yet still feel lost, be “empty and aching” and not know why, still looking for something—whether that something is America or something else. The grace of God meets you right there. Jesus seeks and saves the lost (Luke 19:10). This means Jesus is on the bus with you, to offer love for your empty places and compassion for your aching places.
Love and Prayers,
Dave