Sunday, January 28, 2007

Alcohol and pills . . . and the mystery of life


ON THE LATEST REVOLUTION 21 PODCAST, Fred Eaglesmith makes an important point in his song, Alcohol & Pills:
Alcohol and pills, it's a cryin' shame
You think they might have been happy with the glory and the fame
But fame doesn't take away the pain, it only pays the bills
And you wind up on alcohol and pills

I guess that's what happens sometimes when the mystery of life switches to the "suck" setting, and we just can't make sense of it all. Of course, like the song says, we certainly can make things even worse.

But what if we're not SUPPOSED to make complete sense of it? What if we're just supposed to hold onto the cross of Jesus, endure the bad, rejoice in the good and learn from all of it?

I'm just sayin'.

Seems to me, there isn't any hiding from the pain of life's hard knocks or plain tragedies. You can embrace the pain as Christ embraced the cross, then plow through it with His help.

Or, alternatively, you can hide from it by crawling into the bottle. Or try to dull it through better pharmaceuticals. Or distract yourself from it through stuff, or money, or sex, or notoriety . . . or any number of things.

But it's still there. And how's that working out for folks you know? Really.

Alcohol and pills, it's a cryin' shame
You think they might have been happy with the glory and the fame
But fame doesn't take away the pain, it only pays the bills
And you wind up on alcohol and pills

Seems to me there's a harder -- but better -- way.

I'm just sayin'.

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