What is the zeitgeist of our time? If free love, world peace, and racial equality defined the 1960’s, what about our own age? What about now?

About ten years ago a friend told me he’d figured out the spirit of our age while listening to the music of Sufjan Stevens. In the song he played for me, Sufjan and his band sing “I want to be well” over hundred twenty times, and — in case you didn’t get it the hundredth time — it climaxes with him adding “I’m not f-ing around” an additional sixteen times.

Now while most often expletives are careless, vulgar, and to be avoided, in this instance Sufjan is choosing his words carefully. The man is sick and, more than anything, he wants to be healed. Rather than feeling repetitive, the refrain has a hypnotic effect on the listener. By the song’s climax, Sufjan’s longing and desperation has become the listener’s. Somehow we know now, more than ever before, that we, too, are unwell. We, too, need healing. And we’ll seek after it no matter the cost.

In an age when the wellness movement is a multi-billion dollar industry, we would do well to remember that the message of grace not only grants absolution but also births healing and renewal.

We will not be left as we are. We will be made whole. Or in the words of one of my favorite Collects of the Day “[we] are being changed into his [Jesus’] likeness from glory to glory.”

Grace and Peace,

Ben