“COEXIST (I Will Bless the Lord At All Times?)” is a prayer written in the dirt, caught between lipstick that had learned how not to kiss and drones hovering without any consciousness over war crimes.
It begins as a reckoning with the ego: Am I the best or the worst or the worst of the best?—a line that recalls the self-indictment of “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief” (1 Timothy 1:15, KJV).
The anchor of the song is a vow seized from King David in duress, a stubborn promise to bless the Lord at all times, quoting verbatim “I will bless the LORD at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth” (Psalm 34:1, KJV). This is praise spoken through gritted teeth, and the COEXIST title frames that struggle with what Bono called a “powerful symbol of tolerance,” an attempt to imagine common ground when human rights feel under siege in the aftermath of 9/11.
The child without armour suggests a vulnerability that refuses the king’s heavy steel: “David strapped Saul’s sword over the armor, and he tried in vain to walk, for he was not used to them.” (1 Samuel 17:39, NRSV).
This is the “Beloved community” where food and shelter we share, a radical hospitality that remembers that to honour the hurt and the hungry is to search for the divine in the least and the lost: “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,” (Matthew 25:35, NIV), riffing on the prophet:
“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?” (Isaiah 58:6–7, NIV).
When the girl of Guadalupe sings Save us, she touches the biblical pressure of Hosanna itself: “LORD, save us! LORD, grant us success!” (Psalm 118:25, NIV).
The question mark in the title registers a faith still being tested in the wilderness, still listening for “the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Isaiah 40:3, KJV).