The Setting
The sun retreated behind the Memphis Bridge. Dusk gave way to night as the Mississippi River flowed feverishly at our side. The Foo Fighters took the stage as the headliners to the 2004 Beale Street Music Festival. A slight drizzle graduated into a torrential downpour. We sang as a united chorus of soaking wet sirens. Ankle-deep in mud, my love to my left, and my friend to my right, we danced in the muck. The mess became an accessory to joy rather than a reason for complaint.
The thunder rolled and the band played on. Eventually, the organizers called the band to the side in between songs. There was an obvious risk in continuing the show. We expected to go home, and we fully anticipated (and would have understood) if the Foo needed to cancel the rest of the concert. After a five-minute delay, Dave Grohl took the lead and explained the situation. Contrary to expectations, he reasoned that as he watched the crowd continue through the monsoon, he felt it was only fitting to endure alongside us and finish the show together.
Onward! Song by song, we sang along. The night crescendoed with Everlong. Its lyrics are honest, raw, vulnerable, and hopeful. The gritty and rhythmic guitars overlay electrifying percussion. Beyond all those things, it is beautifully relatable. “And I wonder… When I sing along with you… If everything could ever be this real forever… If anything could ever be this good again…” I hoped as much as we sang in the mire. I begged and pleaded with God at that moment that it would be this good again. In the feast, I remembered the famine.
The Quest
We know and relish these moments. The moments when all is right with the world. Everything else could be imploding in us and exploding around us, but for whatever reason, time seems to stop and smile. We find ourselves free if only for an instant, basking weightless in the sun of the Elysian fields (or the Memphis mud). The temporal points to the eternal and becomes the treasure we crave.
We spend countless hours, riches, desires, and emotions trying to hoard up these moments throughout our lives. But time and time again, we are met by the reality that life is fleeting and fragile. Honeymoons end. Children grow up. We fail one another over and over. We change careers. Friends come and go. Our bodies waste away. They creak, hurt, groan, and ache with age. So if all our hope is primarily bound to such decay, if we are not careful, the abysmal sea of pessimism will inevitably suck us into its boggy wasteland.
However, if our hope is bound to something (or Someone) more, something certain, lasting, and eternal, perhaps the joy, sorrows, and mundane gifts of life would find their proper weight in our hearts. Here and now, those joys and sorrows intertwine. We are guaranteed both, in no particular order and to no specific degree. Every beautiful sunrise becomes a glorious link in a chain dotted with rusty ones. Every bliss and battering plays its part in the scene of the mosaic of our lives. Seen together, this kaleidoscope of beauty and disaster, victory and defeat, joy and sorrow points us to an age-old reality. Pleasure and pain exist. But is there a point to it all?
The Crown
Absolutely. Here, Christianity offers us hope that every pain has a purpose as eternal joy grips our hearts and beckons our gaze beyond the horizon. When we couple the beauty of this momentary bliss with the certainty of our wasting away here, we see a glimmer of a true Everlong. The hope of everlasting freedom flies high in the valley of the shadow of death. In Christ, we taste and see the promises of God, that there is a day coming where all pain shall cease, and joy will be eternal reality. In Christ, the perpetual “I Am,” everything will be this real forever. Everything will be this good (and better) again. Death is not an end but a beginning.
In Christ, we find the strength to press onward in our day of weakness, trial, and difficulty. In Christ, we discover an unhindered cause to dance in the muck of life because we know the One who once silenced the storms on the Sea of Galilee will cause every strong and mighty gale to cease. The calm is Everlong. In Christ, life’s mud and rain become accessories to true, deep, and otherworldly joy. This joy is Everlong. In Christ, the steadfast love of God never ceases. This love is Everlong. It neither wavers nor fluctuates, for His character is unchanging. From everlasting to everlasting, let the promise of basking in the unhindered presence of the immortal God of glory awaken us from the slumber of the mundane, propel us through our tears, and electrify our joy. Until the day when our faith becomes sight, may we dance in the rain, persevere through life’s storms, and treasure life’s glorious moments as we run toward the day where time shall cease, glory will be a reality, and we will wander no more… for Everlong.
Jeremiah 31:3 the LORD appeared to him from far away. I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore, I have continued my faithfulness to you.
… for your progress and joy in the faith.
The Cross & the Crown 