From the Cave to the Stage

In October 1967, Johnny Cash crawled into Nickajack Cave along the Tennessee River, intending never to come out. Years of amphetamine addiction had hollowed him into a ghost of himself. He had lost his first marriage, alienated his friends, and been arrested seven times. The Man in Black wanted to disappear into the dark.

He crawled deeper and deeper until his flashlight died. And there, in total blackness, something shifted. Cash later described feeling the presence of God so strongly that he knew he did not have the right to take his own life. That life was not his to end. He turned around and began crawling, following what he called a faint breeze, until he emerged into daylight at the mouth of the cave.

June Carter and his mother were waiting there. They had come looking for him.

Cash never touched amphetamines again. The man who crawled into that cave broken and hopeless walked out into a life of faith, sobriety, and some of the most powerful music ever recorded. He spent the rest of his career singing about redemption because he had lived it.

The Apostle Paul wrote, "If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here." Transformation rarely begins on a mountaintop. More often, it begins in a cave — in the darkest moment when the God Who Sees refuses to let us go. Whatever darkness you are crawling through today, El Roi is already there, breathing a way forward.