“Highway 20 Ride” by the Zac Brown Band
— Friday, April 1st, 2011 —
I just can’t get it out of my mind. Not too long ago I heard about a man, about my age, who had to sit his children down and tell them their mom and he were divorcing. Every time I think of it I imagine the horror of what it would be like to look into the eyes of my own four children and say something like that. I can’t think of it without wincing, as though watching a man shot in the head.
There’s a similar feeling of melancholy that sweeps over me when I listen to this song, and for the same reason. The song immerses you in the pleadings of a man explaining to his child why “your mom and me, we couldn’t get along.” I wipe away tears every time I hear this song, just imagining the pain of it all. And I have no idea.
I think this song strikes into something that is everywhere around us. Consciences that are wounded from divorce. In this episode of “The Cross and the Jukebox,” we talk about how, as the church of Christ Jesus, to address those consciences. I don’t think we can do it with merciless judgmentalism…or with justiceless sentimentalism.
In order to address the conscience in this kind of bondage, we’ve got to tell the truth, about divorce…and about the kids. But we’ve got to tell the truth all the way to the Blood.
