Rich Mullins by Brennan Manning

Author:Brennan Manning
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: B&H Publishing Group
Published: 2009-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Rich's music became a healing agent. Through the years, countless people told him how his songs carried them through times of pain. Rich's sister, Debbie, remembers, “I went to a concert and, without warning, he dedicated the song ‘Verge of a Miracle’ to me. I had recently gone through treatment for alcoholism, and it was his way of saying that he believed I was on the right track and that God was working a miracle in me. I played that song over and over and over after that night, and I really think it helped keep me sober through the hard times. Sometimes I didn't believe the words in that song, but it was enough that he believed it.” Fellow singer Bonnie Keen of the group First Call, says, “My favorite song of Rich's is ‘Bound to Come Some Trouble.’ It has been a balm to me through divorce, depression, and losses of every kind over the years.”10 Amy Grant comments, “Most of us, we kind of have a brush with God, and we're enamored and frightened. But it's always kind of that barely leaning in. And Rich just had a way of running headlong into the unknown that was frightening to most of us. But in his own unique way, it seemed he always was able to find the edge and look into the abyss and come back and write a song about it and tell us what he'd seen.”11

Broken on the Wheels of Living

Writer and speaker Brennan Manning, a very close friend to Rich in the last years of Rich's life, describes Rich's lifelong pains this way: “There's a scene in Thornton Wilder's play The Angel that Troubled the Waters which to me really captures the essence of the life and the spirituality of Rich Mullins. The scene is a doctor who comes to the pool every day, wanting to be healed of his melancholy and his gloom and his sadness. Finally the angel appears. The doctor, he's a medical doctor, goes to step into the water. The angel blocks his entrance and says, ‘No, step back, the healing is not for you.'

“The doctor pleads, ‘But I've got to get into the water. I can't live this way.'

“The angel says, ‘No, this moment is not for you.’

“And he says, ‘But how can I live this way?’

“The angel says to him, ‘Doctor, without your wounds, where would your power be? It is your melancholy that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men and women. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children of this earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In love's service only wounded soldiers can serve.'

“And to me the theme of that story is the theme to Rich Mullins's life. All grace, all light, all truth, all power are communicated though the vulnerability, the brokenness, the utter honesty of men and women who have been shipwrecked, heartbroken, broken in the wheels of living. In love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.

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