Speaking in the Light — God Is Into the Rolling Stones!

Back in 1972, The Rolling Stones released a song off their “Exile on Main Street” album called “Shine a Light.” The song was originally titled “Get a Line on You” and it dealt quite candidly with band member Brian Jones’ ever-worsening addiction to drugs and his detachment from the rest of the band. The lyrics are very sobering and spiritual. They go something like this:
“When you’re drunk in the alley, baby, with your clothes all torn…
And your late night friends leave you in the cold gray dawn…
Just seemed too many flies on you, I just can’t brush them off…
Angels beating all their wings in time-
With smiles on their faces and a gleam right in their eyes…
Whoa, thought I heard one sigh for you, Come on up, come on up, now, come on up now…
May the good Lord shine a light on you, make every song you sing your favorite tune…
May the good Lord shine a light on you, Warm like the evening sun…”
Easter is God’s love song to all of mankind that life doesn’t have to end in the gutter. Easter sings loud God’s lyrics of new life being broadcast to humanity as a whole that even death has not been allowed to get the final word on how our story concludes.
As a matter of fact, the Lord can resurrect life from even the most barren of situations and hopeless of circumstances. But for Him to shine His light on us, we need to come out from our hiding places and get those rocks to roll
Is there a boulder that is blocking your heart from making its move into the broad daylight so that it may be allowed to beat again to the rhythm of the angels’ wings? Is there some worry, annoying anxiousness, defeat, denial, discouragement or disappointment that is keeping you from taking the first step of faith so that the process of being made alive again can begin?
All of us have experienced the dark hours of losing loved ones, seeing our dreams die, watching our self-esteem get stepped on, having our good intentions be spit at and told over and over again by uncaring individuals to just keep our mouths shut, get back in line and do what it takes to survive. But we were meant to live for so much more.
We are not just a number. This life isn’t just mere coincidences sewn together by some fickle finger of fate. And we can’t be told to “keep the faith” if we never acquired one in the first place.
What I love about Easter is that Jesus is still in the business of rolling stones away today. I tried for years on my own to attempt to arrange my life in such a way that everything would come up roses and all of my life would turn out like a big Broadway musical and in the end, we’d all live happily ever after. Life just never cooperated with my agenda.
I have experienced hatred and hurt and heart attacks and death and cancer and deceit and lies and lots of rain on my parades. I have felt the despair of being in the lowest of lowest places on this earth, where I didn’t sense I could move another step. It was tempting to think that I was stuck in the nightmare forever until I actually got to the place where I gave up, but that wasn’t such a bad thing after all.
Have you ever noticed that we do the same thing with our hands when we surrender and give up that we also do when we win a race or a ballgame or a competitive event of any kind? We hold our hands up high to the sky. The same movement we make in being held up by a gunman is also the exact posture we find ourselves in when we win big. I realized this truth when I finally got to the point of surrendering everything to the Lord and giving up the control that I never really had in the first place. I did this by literally raising my hands and showing God my empty palms to reveal to Him that I was ready to hold nothing back.
But giving up everything is not the same thing as giving up on everything! It was only in that humble setting that I was finally ready to receive from the Lord. When you have nothing in your hands, it also means that there won’t be anything getting in the way of you accepting freely everything that the Lord wants to give to you. And it was there at my lowest that the Lord was about to roll some boulders from here to kingdom come so that He could raise me up to some new heights. What did God long to give me? Everything. Not everything I wanted- but definitely everything He knew that I needed.
I received treasures like His unconditional love, the ability to forgive and be forgiven, and the reality that faith doesn’t mean it will all work out in my time, but it will eventually all make sense in God’s promising plans. This journey is going some where worth the time and effort and the trip to get there.
When Jesus died on the cross, He held out His hands in a posture of surrender… And what looked like a great defeat to everyone around- was actually a position of victory. Jesus kicked death smack in the teeth and took on the wrath and punishment for our sins and made it possible for everyone who would hold up their hands and surrender to Him- to be able to receive God’s gift of eternal life. Jesus got the flies of decay away from us for good!
Eternal life is not a quantity deal defined only in living forever somewhere far into the future after I die. It is a quality perspective defined in the living forever right here and now. Eternal life is all about a relational connection and in knowing Jesus, I receive all that I could find no where else, in no one else. I discover a lover and a helper, a redeemer and a true friend and in that confidence I can finally hold my hands high no matter what.
So maybe this Easter you need more than a chocolate bunny and a jelly bean. You need a Hero and somebody who will risk it all and come into your burning building, and when everyone else has pronounced it a lost cause, Jesus lays down His life and rescues you. He turns the sting of death into a new song of delight. So may the good Lord shine His light on you and make every song you sing your favorite tune.
Our melody doesn’t have to end in winter. Easter promises us an eternal spring. The rolling stone of Easter guarantees that number one truth forever.
Write Pastor Rudy pastorrudytlc@comcast.net