one of my favorite happenings is when god reveals glimpses of himself in unanticipated or unexpected places or/and events. maybe i should not be so startled or surprised, but when it happens, i feel the most like a child on christmas morning than at any other time. one such event occurred last friday night at the beau rivage hotel and casino in biloxi, mississippi.

my lovely and gracious wife and i are not big fans of the boats, but we did want to catch the los lonely boys in concert. so, we booked a room, burned through a roll of nickels at the one-armed-bandits, ate some pretty good food, and set off to hear what turned out to be a great concert.

i knew the los lonely boys were going to be good, but had no idea that they were going to be THAT good. the three brothers ( henry, jojo, and ringo garza) brought it for roughly 70 minutes, came back for a one song encore that turned into a two song encore that morphed into another twenty minutes split between stevie wonder’s superstition and jimi hendrix’s voodoo child. Wow. pretty much the whole concert was amped a bit more than their studio work; in fact, the pace and volume of the concert revealed a whole other side of the band.

but i digress - - - about twenty minutes into the show, for one brief moment, the boys slowed the pace a bit. henry dedicated a song to “all of us here tonight who might have done that one little thing in our life we might regret,” and then they played forgiven.

it’s not like i haven’t heard the song before or haven’t ever contemplated the spiritual journey of the band whose albums include titles like forgiven and scacred.

maybe it was the venue – a casino – with vice in all its forms available. maybe it was the brazen act of witness in a secular forum. whatever it was, in the roughly 3 minutes it took for the los lonely boys to perform forgiven, the arena was almost completely silent, and i was taken into the presence of god in a powerful and palpable way.

and it was pretty cool to know that the answer to the song’s question, “Can I be forgiven?” is a resounding, “YES!”



Take it away. Take it away.
Take away these feelings cuz they're bringing me down.
Cuz I can't breathe. Feels like I can't breathe.
Feels just like this whole world's coming down on me.

Oh, can I be Forgiven for all I have done?

Can you set me free? Can you set me free?
Set me free from all this pain life's done to me.

If you can hear me praying, then I'll ask one more time.

Can you take it away, Lord? Oh, can I be forgiven?
Can you take it away, Lord? Help me change my ways of living.
[ Forgiven lyrics from http://www.lyricsyoulove.com/ ]

Oh, can I be forgiven for all I have done?
Is there time for me? Is there still time for me?
Time to change whatever I've got left of me.

If you can hear me praying, then I'll ask one more time.

Can you take it away, Lord? Oh, can I be forgiven?
Can you take it away, Lord? Help me change my ways of living.