Isaiah 6:6

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We either unsuccessfully try to bury the sins of the father ourselves—or we go to God Father and let Him do it.

No one has mapped that struggle like Tom Waits. His songs are littered with small, desperate rituals of absolution: a cigarette pressed to the lips like a wafer, smoke drawn in as if it could burn the guilt away. In “Grapefruit Moon,” he lights up and strives for purity; in “Sins of My Father,” he drags the whole family curse down to the pond to drown it. The cigarette becomes confession, the water baptism, the smoke a thin, trembling prayer.

It’s the same choice, over and over:

•  Ignore God and pretend the past never happened.

•  Ignore our earthly fathers and hope the sins don’t follow.

•  Or walk straight into the throne room—like Isaiah in chapter 6—and let a seraph touch a burning coal to our mouth, burying every stain with one searing, silent grace.

Waits never preaches. He just lights another cigarette and lets the smoke carry the question:

Will this one finally cleanse me—or do I need the fire from somewhere higher?

 

Isaiah 6:6

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth with it, and said:

“Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”