It’s been rainin’ in the mountains and the river’s on the rise.
The Devil, Hoyt Axton, ©1971
And we cannot hardly reach the other side.
And the devil, he’s in trouble; I can see it in his eyes.
If you don’t give him shelter, he won’t have no place to hide.
The devil deals in dyin’ and he travels in a hearse.
He treats you like a dog, now; he’d like to treat you worse.
But he don’t have the answers, an’ if he did, he’d lie.
The devil is a joker an’ he don’t want you alive.
This song has been rolling around in my head over the past few days. I remember listening to it years ago when I was a kid with Dad. We would talk about good and evil and the devil. As I read over the this verse, there’s a lot of truth to it.
It certainly seems as if we are in a time of storms… the rain has been falling pretty hard the past couple years, hasn’t it? The river is rising and running fast and it’s all we can do to ford across it and get to the other side without going under or getting swept away. From the wars around the globe, to violence in our cities and towns, to political unrest, to the shattering of families, to rising costs and diminishing supplies, to stress, anxiety, hopelessness, and depression, to abuse and degrading speech… the list goes on, but the storms are blowing from every direction. We want to escape and we believe that once we cross the river, the other side holds a promise of hope — a new chapter.
Throughout history and spanning cultures, there has been good and evil; dark and light. The personification of evil has been referred to as “the devil” in many traditions. In the Christian tradition, the devil was also referred to as Satan; a being created by God, who fell from glory by his choice, was cast to the earth and became the antithesis of everything good. He is depicted as a serpent and a dragon but also as an angel of light. In other words, he is good at deception. The biblical narrative says that in the end, the devil will be cast away and God’s light and love will triumph over evil and darkness. The darkness will not overcome (John 1:5).
In the song, the devil is in trouble. You can tell by looking at him that he is getting worried. Why? Perhaps because down deep, he knows his fate. He might be the king of deception, but does that also mean he is able to deceive himself to the point where he believes that darkness has a chance… where a created being can triumph over the infinite uncreated One?
When we harbor negativity, anger, hatred, unkindness, bitterness, violence, profanity, and the like, we give shelter to the darkness, and in the darkness is where the devil likes to hide. Death is indicative of the devil — whether that is because of addiction or violent choices, he travels in a hearse … the grim reaper, as it were. And we can choose to participate in death when we choose to speak negativity, slander, gossip, and words that don’t lift up or encourage. The devil personifies the opposite of the qualities that are a part of the Divine. Hope. Peace. Goodness. Love. Selflessness. Humility. You are wrapped in hope and joy and surrounded with love when you walk with God. Your destiny is filled with promise, passion, desire, and purpose. Conversely, the devil has none of these qualities. He might try to fake them — but it’s a hollow, temporary illusion — and in the end, you are treated like a dog, kicked to the curb once you are used.
Pursuing a life of hedonism and selfishness seems appealing sometimes. I deserve ____. Why shouldn’t it be me? But eventually these pursuits fall flat and lose their lustre. There are no answers to the deeper more meaningful things and even if there were, the king of lies wouldn’t tell you, would he? He twists truth and convinces you that his lies are truth.
It’s hard to not be negative or focus on the darkness when it seems to surround us. We get so overcome by the storm that we forget that we have a shelter of safety, a tower of strength, a hand that holds us — like a mother bird who covers her children with her wings, drawing them close to her in safety. These are all pictures of God. Sometimes we don’t see this. We think God is distant, uninvolved, unconcerned. And it can be hard to reconcile all the awful things that we go through or how evil persists in the world without this all-powerful God stepping in and obliterating the bad guys like a Marvel superhero.
I don’t have answers, but I have faith. Faith that I connect with the Divine. Faith that I have been given a purpose, a desire, a destiny to do good. To serve others. To use my life to be a light. And if we all hold up our lights — through our speech, our actions, our service — the devil has no shelter as the darkness gets pushed back.
Everything was created through God; nothing — not one thing! — came into being without the Divine. What came into existence was Life, and the Life was Light to live by. This Life-Light blazes out of the darkness; the darkness can not put it out.
John 1:3-5