A couple of weekends ago, my wife Kelly and I took a quick end-of-the-summer trip to Las Vegas to see a show. It remains true that the city’s many sparkling hotels and bustling casinos wouldn’t be there without a host of ordinary folks losing a ton of money there at all hours of the day and night. Having said this, it should also be noted that for folks like us who aren’t gamblers, the range of things to do and see in this desert city has greatly expanded over the last several years. There are remarkable fountains at the Bellagio. Gondola rides at the Venetian. An erupting volcano at the Mirage. A replica of the Eiffel Tower. A gigantic ferris wheel. An enormous sphere called The Sphere. Millions of flashing lights. Never-ending pool parties. And a number of unique museums. It’s a very odd place.
But Vegas is also full of remarkably hard-working people. Industrious hotel employees, early-rising maids, attentive waiters, waitresses, and bartenders, friendly card dealers, and an untold number of busy cab drivers, including the one who regaled us with twenty minutes of increasingly outlandish conspiracy theories about the state of the world from the airport all the way to our hotel.
Indeed, Las Vegas is profane, mundane, cheesy, and oftentimes absurd—hardly the place one expects to experience something spiritual, even transcendent. And yet, there was this show we came to see—a concert featuring The Killers, a group that started in Vegas back in 2001. Though the band’s name calls to mind notions of all that’s unsavory about their hometown, more than just about any act around, their music has a way of elevating the collective spirit of every audience who comes to see them—wherever they are.
Brandon Flowers, the band’s lead singer, is the youngest of six children born into a Church of Latter Day Saints family in a suburb of Las Vegas. He grew up in Utah before returning to the city to live with his aunt as a teenager. And while I don’t know the precise contours of Flowers’ faith, the spirit of the band he leads on stage, his songwriting, and the way he seems to live his life, all suggest he’s made himself available to God to inspire those who might not otherwise seek out any meaningful or abiding communion with the divine.
The band’s most famous song, Mr. Brightside, concerns the very human struggle to maintain one’s sense of hope against the visceral emotion of corrosive jealousy. In All These Things That I've Done, Flowers tells the story of a friend who mentors wounded soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress following combat. He wrote Everything Will Be Alright about his wife Tana’s struggle with childhood trauma. Flowers had his three children sing backup on another beautiful song he wrote to his wife called Some Kind of Love in 2020. “I’m proud of that one,” he said. The cover of the album the band released in 2021 is emblazoned with a mournful photograph of three crosses on a deserted hill, and each December, the group records a new Christmas song to generate funds for charity, each one speaking into the season with great poignancy. For instance, the Gospel-laden offering, Joseph, Better You Than Me, asks:
Are the rumors eating you alive, Joseph?
Once one begins to listen, the more one hears the spirituality, the faith running through their music. Fire in Bone retells the story of the Prodigal Son. My Own Soul’s Warning describes how our conscience, which we can feel, links us to our Creator whom we cannot see:
If you could see through the banner of the sun, Into eternity's eyes like a vision reaching down to you, Would you turn away? What if it knew you by your name?
Their song entitled, The Calling, starts with a recitation from the Gospel of Luke:
Behold many publicans and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples, and when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto His disciples: Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard, He said unto them, they that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.
So, there I was in the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, the very epicenter of what many call Sin City, listening to a band called The Killers.
The Calling continues like this:
You heard that the Master was travelin' through, But what would you do if He walked in the room?
Here’s what I suppose I learned that night: God can show up anywhere. Everywhere. Whenever, wherever, and however God wants to show up.
God—Wherever I am. Help me to listen. Help me to hear. Amen.
