Bob Bennett isn’t the most celebrated Christian singer/songwriter on the scene, but I’ve heard no one who matches the depth of his lyrics. There’s a pair of lines in his song “Matters of the Heart” that I hope someone might see fit to carve on my tombstone someday:

Day by day, the integration
of the concrete and the spiritual.

It’s not every day that someone can capture the process of your entire life in one sentence. Maybe that happens once per lifetime.

This process, it’s a spiral, a helix, a melding of two things that so often seem to be in opposition. Jesus said to his disciples, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41)

Isn’t this what most tears us apart? When the concrete pulls south and the spiritual pulls north… it’s why Paul said in exasperation, “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God€”through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. (Romans 7:21-25).

Sometimes chapter breaks in the Bible are unfortunate, because you’re left hanging unless you go on to chapter 8:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death.”

You get to have a happy ending, if you want. The integration of body and spirit happens when we’re set free. Warring enemies become close friends.

Which reminds me of another song… Mike Portnoy wrote in “The Glass Prison” of his bitter struggle with alcohol addiction:

Way off in the distance I saw a door
I tried to open
I tried forcing with all of my will but still
The door wouldn’t open

Unable to trust in my faith
I turned and walked away
I looked around, felt a chill in the air
Took my will and turned it over

The glass prison which once held me is gone
A long lost fortress
Armed only with liberty
And the key of my willingness

Fell down on my knees and prayed
“Thy will be done”
I turned around, saw a light shining through
The door was wide open

-From the album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence by Dream Theater