“When I get to heaven,” John Prine famously wrote and sang, “I’m gonna shake God’s hand. Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand.”
Prine was not a church going man, perhaps not even baptized. There is a new book just out and perhaps that will tell us more about what kind of believer or unbeliever John Prine was. I hope so.
Also, I hope John is strumming and singing when Charlie Kirk gets there. Maybe Charlie will take a chair and sing along with “blow up your TV, throw away your paper, go to the country, build you a home. Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches. Try and find Jesus on your own.”
Maybe that will generate a conversation about how to find Jesus, and what Jesus might be like. John has another song he might sing, about bumping into the savior and how that bump precipitated a conversation.
“He spoke to me of morality, starvation, pain, and sin. Matter of fact, the whole dang time I only got a few words in. But I won’t squawk, Let ‘im talk. Hell, it’s been a long, long time….’Cause everybody needs somebody that they can talk to.”
That is the whole premise of the song. Jesus needed somebody to talk to. Imagine that. And imagine this: Charlie Kirk sitting down with Jesus and listening!
Imagine Charlie Kirk sitting down with anybody … and listening!
That is not the way Mr. Kirk has handled his publicized talks. “Prove me wrong,” he has challenged anybody, everybody, anywhere. But these “conversations” are not really that. They are set ups for Charlie the great debater, the great jouster, the quick man with a clever quip getting the best of somebody slower, newer, and yes, less experienced at these public debates.
Charlie spent his flashpoint of a life impressing crowds and wowing donors, but rarely did he carry on a conversation with anybody, at least in public. He was never in a mood to learn or grow or expand his understanding (least of all his sympathy).
When he gets to heaven, Charlie that is, all that will change. He will find himself sitting next to a black man who never got into flight school because, well, he was black. Charlie, you might know, is famous for saying, “When I see that the pilot is black, I wonder if he is qualified or if he is just another DEI hire.” Sitting with hundreds of qualified black men who never got the opportunity to take control of a fighter jet or a passenger plane will help Charlie think differently about things.
Then there is the transgender girl. Charlie won’t know she is transgender when the talking begins, when the girl begins to tell her story, Charlie will be, hopefully, ready with his questions: “When did you first feel strange as a boy?” and “Who was the first person you talked to about this and what did they say?” and “How did it feel when first you put on a dress?” and “What difficulties have you encountered in your new life?”
Mostly, Charlie has all the answers, and we know pretty much in advance what they are. But when he gets to heaven, he will have a lot more questions than answers, I suspect, and he will find a lot of people who will help him realize the meaning of that old gospel song, “We will understand it better by and by.”
Like the children of Sandy Hook. They gather every week and take up the lesson that was interrupted on that December day in 2012. Charlie himself was only 19 at the time, had just flunked out of college and taken up his public campaign. He did not notice the shooting and never went to Sandy Hook to speak to the families about owning a gun to protect some constitutional right. His two children are not yet old enough for school, for school lessons or school shootings.
The Sandy Hook children will talk to him, and he will listen. They will testify and he will understand. In heaven surrounded by these children, he will learn that his right to have a gun is not nearly as precious as the right of a child to have a life.
Those children will not be impressed by his quick-witted repartee. No, not for a moment, and neither will John Prine or Jesus. Or you and me. Or anybody.
Because, when you get to heaven, you learn things you thought you knew and you ask questions you never thought to ask and, maybe, you join in the chorus of that John Prine song, “When I get to heaven I going to open up a nightclub called ‘the Tree of Forgiveness’ and forgive everybody ever done me any harm.”
People around him singing will be thinking of Charlie as they sing, will be forgiving the version of Charlie that was too young to understand so much about life and love and justice and Jesus.
It takes some of us a long time. I know.
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“When I get to heaven,” John Prine famously wrote and sang, “I’m gonna shake God’s hand. Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand.”
Prine was not a church going man, perhaps not even baptized. There is a new book just out and perhaps that will tell us more about what kind of believer or unbeliever John Prine was. I hope so.
Also, I hope John is strumming and singing when Charlie Kirk gets there. Maybe Charlie will take a chair and sing along with “blow up your TV, throw away your paper, go to the country, build you a home. Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches. Try and find Jesus on your own.”
Maybe that will generate a conversation about how to find Jesus, and what Jesus might be like. John has another song he might sing, about bumping into the savior and how that bump precipitated a conversation.
“He spoke to me of morality, starvation, pain, and sin. Matter of fact, the whole dang time I only got a few words in. But I won’t squawk, Let ‘im talk. Hell, it’s been a long, long time….’Cause everybody needs somebody that they can talk to.”
That is the whole premise of the song. Jesus needed somebody to talk to. Imagine that. And imagine this: Charlie Kirk sitting down with Jesus and listening!
Imagine Charlie Kirk sitting down with anybody … and listening!
That is not the way Mr. Kirk has handled his publicized talks. “Prove me wrong,” he has challenged anybody, everybody, anywhere. But these “conversations” are not really that. They are set ups for Charlie the great debater, the great jouster, the quick man with a clever quip getting the best of somebody slower, newer, and yes, less experienced at these public debates.
Charlie spent his flashpoint of a life impressing crowds and wowing donors, but rarely did he carry on a conversation with anybody, at least in public. He was never in a mood to learn or grow or expand his understanding (least of all his sympathy).
When he gets to heaven, Charlie that is, all that will change. He will find himself sitting next to a black man who never got into flight school because, well, he was black. Charlie, you might know, is famous for saying, “When I see that the pilot is black, I wonder if he is qualified or if he is just another DEI hire.” Sitting with hundreds of qualified black men who never got the opportunity to take control of a fighter jet or a passenger plane will help Charlie think differently about things.
Then there is the transgender girl. Charlie won’t know she is transgender when the talking begins, when the girl begins to tell her story, Charlie will be, hopefully, ready with his questions: “When did you first feel strange as a boy?” and “Who was the first person you talked to about this and what did they say?” and “How did it feel when first you put on a dress?” and “What difficulties have you encountered in your new life?”
Mostly, Charlie has all the answers, and we know pretty much in advance what they are. But when he gets to heaven, he will have a lot more questions than answers, I suspect, and he will find a lot of people who will help him realize the meaning of that old gospel song, “We will understand it better by and by.”
Like the children of Sandy Hook. They gather every week and take up the lesson that was interrupted on that December day in 2012. Charlie himself was only 19 at the time, had just flunked out of college and taken up his public campaign. He did not notice the shooting and never went to Sandy Hook to speak to the families about owning a gun to protect some constitutional right. His two children are not yet old enough for school, for school lessons or school shootings.
The Sandy Hook children will talk to him, and he will listen. They will testify and he will understand. In heaven surrounded by these children, he will learn that his right to have a gun is not nearly as precious as the right of a child to have a life.
Those children will not be impressed by his quick-witted repartee. No, not for a moment, and neither will John Prine or Jesus. Or you and me. Or anybody.
Because, when you get to heaven, you learn things you thought you knew and you ask questions you never thought to ask and, maybe, you join in the chorus of that John Prine song, “When I get to heaven I going to open up a nightclub called ‘the Tree of Forgiveness’ and forgive everybody ever done me any harm.”
People around him singing will be thinking of Charlie as they sing, will be forgiving the version of Charlie that was too young to understand so much about life and love and justice and Jesus.
It takes some of us a long time. I know.
subscribe today! It’s free and comes every week!
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