How U2 and President lead me to prayer.
Music anchors my life. It always has. It fills the silence in a way nothing else can, a constant companion when everything else feels uncertain.
There are times I step away from it—intentionally, even—but those breaks never last. I always come back. I need it.
Part of that is because I’ve always been drawn to the bigger questions. The uncomfortable ones. The ones most people would rather not sit with for too long. I don’t mind the darkness. In some ways, I’m more at home there than I should be.
It’s both a strength and a flaw. A way of understanding the world—and a way of getting stuck in it.
Lately, that pull has been finding its way back through music again.
Two recent releases have been sitting with me in a way I can’t quite shake: “Mercy” by President, and the Easter Lily EP from U2.
They’re very different on the surface. Different eras, different voices, different intentions.
But underneath, they seem to be circling the same question.
I’ve been thinking a lot about prayer lately.
And as it just so happens, my son is starting to find his own taste in music. One of the bands he keeps coming back to is U2.
Which is funny, because I know it’s not exactly “cool” to like U2 these days.
They can be corny. Bono’s rock star persona has worn thin over the years. And it’s hard to forget the whole iTunes incident—when they forced an album onto everyone’s devices. I’m sure it felt generous on their end, but to a lot of people it came off as tone-deaf. Maybe even invasive.
They’ve been relatively quiet since then. Bono did his one-man show. The band faded a bit from the center of things.
Then they released The Days of Ash EP not too long ago. It leaned political. I liked it quite a bit.
But it didn’t prepare me for how much I would connect with Easter Lily.
Because listening to it brought me back to something I’ve been wrestling with—this idea of prayer, and how easily it gets lost now.
Prayer, to me, isn’t just religion.
It’s thought.
It’s the act of sitting with something long enough for it to matter.
Sometimes it’s trying to solve the world’s problems. Sometimes it’s just noticing where you are. A quiet moment. A breath. A kind of attention we don’t give ourselves very often anymore.
And maybe that’s why it feels like something that needs to be protected.
Guarded, even.
Because everything around us is built to pull us away from that kind of stillness.
But when I listen to U2—when I’m in the right mood—I feel something close to it again. Something I don’t always have a name for.
There’s a line that sticks with me:
“I will bless the Lord at all times.”
It’s simple. Almost too simple.
But it pulls me back to gratitude. To presence. To something steady underneath everything else.
And maybe that’s what prayer is, at its core.
Not asking.
Not performing.
Just remembering.
But that feeling doesn’t last.
Or maybe it does—but it doesn’t feel universal anymore.
Because not everything I’ve been listening to meets me in that same place.
“Mercy” by President doesn’t feel like prayer in the same way. It doesn’t feel grounded or steady. It feels like something closer to a demand. Or maybe a protest.
If U2 sounds like someone trying to hold onto faith, “Mercy” sounds like someone questioning whether it ever held in the first place.
The song circles around religion, but not comfortably. It feels strained. There’s a tension running through it—like belief has been twisted, or used, or maybe just worn out.
It’s not asking gently.
It’s pushing.
There’s a sense of people moving, trying to be heard, trying to force something to respond. Not sitting in stillness. Not waiting. Not trusting.
And underneath that, there’s something more uncomfortable.
It doesn’t just question religion. It questions whether mercy itself is real. Or available. Or equally given.
Where U2 leans into gratitude—into blessing—“Mercy” feels like it’s asking:
Who actually gets that?
And who doesn’t?
If U2 is the old guard, still reaching for something steady, President is the present—restless, unconvinced, and pulling toward cynicism whether we want it to or not.
What does it mean that these two exist at the same time?
If U2 looks at the world and still sees grace—while questioning whether we’re strong enough to endure everything happening around us—then “Mercy” feels like the other side of that coin. The part that’s no longer sure grace is enough. Or even there.
And maybe that’s where I keep landing.
Because if there’s one thing I take away from all of it, it’s still that line:
“I will bless the Lord at all times.”
Not because it’s easy. Not because it ignores what’s broken.
But because it refuses to let the brokenness be the only thing that defines us.
Maybe we’re asking for mercy too much.
Maybe we’re waiting—for something external to step in, to fix things, to make sense of it all—without really sitting with what our role is in any of it.
What we can do.
What we should do.
Separate from asking a creator—or life itself—to hand us the answers.
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about—and living with—darkness.
So there’s something grounding about watching my son lean toward something more hopeful. Something more thoughtful. Something like U2.
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 
Leave a comment