As I was driving into town this morning on my way to work, I was listening to a mix tape that I had put together years ago. Just as I was crossing the city limits, the Joni Mitchell song, “A Case of You” came on. I like that song.
As I was listening, the verse that I will quote below struck me in a way that had nothing to do with its context in Mitchell’s song. For it occurred to me that if we lukewarm Christians; we whose faith perhaps glows like molten steel while inside the church, but so quickly chills out to gun metal gray when we hit those mean streets; we who are so easily beguiled, coddled, and hummed to sleep in the soft arms of easy grace; that if only we, I thought, would apply these words of Joni Mitchell, not to some transient lover, but to Jesus Christ, what a difference it would make in our lives:
Go to him,
Stay with him if you can--
But be prepared to bleed.
