Chapter 11 On the Altar of Grace

Well now, everything dies, baby, that's a fact,
But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.
Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty,
And meet me tonight in Atlantic City

Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City


The Boss is breathing through these speakers, scratchy and wanting. He’s assuring me that everything dies. I know this, of course, but then he speculates that maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

He doesn’t seem convinced.

All the same, he’s promising his lover that they’ll somehow find redemption in Atlantic City—you know, new life rising from bad luck. But this aging Jersey-boy knows the fleeting romance of those beaches all too well, and often the only thing discovered there is a hope for redemption. A deceptive hope.

I'm tainted, though, for a return from death in any form is a check to my Baptist- bred spirit; it's some new-age reincarnation mumbo jumbo that whispers the same false hope to otherwise intelligent people.

Much like gambling always will.

Then again, some things do die and they do come back. Isn't death synonymous with sin, especially to a certain Someone? I think so, those evil twin brothers, both gripping me, white-knuckled for a lifetime. They should both perish in the wake of this Salvation—and I know they do—once, twice and again, but their hold on me is tragic. Did I make some deal with the devil, unbeknownst to me and my good intentions? Who is that leading me from behind, like a thug, his hand on my back, pushing, taunting, turning me this way and that? He’ll follow me through this life of mine, I just know it. He’ll pull me into dark alleyways and corners to remind me who’s really in control, timing his sucker punches just so to the gut.

And I’ve lost my breath again.

For there, I’m reminded that what perishes once on the altar of grace must return with a vengeance, for another round, to test the limit and resolve of such a concept. Surely this everlasting forgiveness is folly to everyone but the One who promised it. Maybe everything that dies, someday comes back.

Certainly sin and its founder would agree.

And the undying pressure of that persuasion stares grace in the eye and it goads me to do the same. To render it useless, for how could anything cover and cleanse this defiance, over and over again? I’m assured it’s normal to join in and to laugh at it, most definitely to mock it.

Try sinning again and find grace wanting, I hear him hiss. Do it again and again for without more sin, how can you ever know its margins?

I must test these waters.

And so I do. One toe, a foot. A leg and it’s warm. How soon does grace respond? It must be quickly, for what threat does fire bring to water? Soon I’m immersed in it, and I must find a way to stay here. To feel it on my skin. To know it like I know anything true.

These waters are deep, cleansing and effortless, my old ways defeated, today and tomorrow; for life goes on and on, offering real hope to otherwise intelligent people.

And death is no match for that.

19 One man said no to God and put many people in the wrong; one man said yes to God and put many in the right. 20 All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it's sin versus grace, grace wins hands down. 21 All sin can do is threaten us with death, and that's the end of it. Grace, because God is putting everything together again through the Messiah, invites us into life - a life that goes on and on and on, world without end. (Romans 5 19-21 The Message)