Editing Tender Mercies (section)

===Death and resurrection===
{{Quote box |quoted=true |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 |salign=center |width=225px |align=right | quote  = When his newly recovered relationship with Sue Anne is cut short by an automobile accident that takes her life, Mac quickly realizes that his life as a Christian is no more sheltered from this world's tragedies than it was before. Foote intimates that all relationships cannot be mended, some by choice and some by chance, and the poignancy of missed opportunities between fathers and their children on this earth is underlined in this scene. | source = Rebecca Luttrell Briley, ''You Can Go Home Again: The Focus on Family in the Works of Horton Foote''<ref name="Briley112" />}}
Mac experiences his spiritual resurrection even as he wrestles with death, in both the past — Sonny's father in the Vietnam War — and present — his own daughter in a car accident.<ref name="Leonard142" /> The latter threatens to derail Mac's new life, captured in the moment when he learns of it and turns off the radio that is playing his new song.<ref name="Anker135" /> Leonard writes of this resurrection, "Depression hangs like a pall over ''Tender Mercies'', [but] what makes this film inspiring is that it is also about the joy of being found.&nbsp;... Mac finds the way, the truth, and the life he wants."<ref name="Leonard142" /> In a climactic scene, Mac tells Rosa Lee that he was once nearly killed in a car crash himself, which forces him to address the question of why he was allowed to live while others have died. Jewett writes of this scene, "Mac Sledge can't trust happiness because it remains inexplicable. But he does trust the tender mercies that mysteriously led him from death to life."<ref name="Jewett62">{{Harvnb|Jewett|1993|p=62}}.</ref>

Mac is portrayed as near death at the beginning of the film, having woken up in a drunken stupor in a boundless, empty flatland with nothing in his possession, a shot that scholar Roy M. Anker said "pointedly reflects the condition of his own soul".<ref>{{Harvnb|Anker|2004|p=124}}.</ref> The dialogue in other scenes suggests the threat of mortality, including a moment when Mac has trouble singing due to his bad voice and says, "Don't feel sorry for me, Rosa Lee, I'm not dead yet."<ref name="Jewett62" /> In several lasting shots, the vast sky dwarfs Mac, Rosa Lee and Sonny, starkly symbolizing their isolation, as well as the fragility of human existence.<ref name="Anker132" /> The fact that Mac sustains his newfound life with Rosa Lee and Sonny after his daughter's death, rather than reverting to his old pattern of alcoholism and abuse, is consistent with a recurring theme in Foote's works of characters overcoming tragedy and finding in it an opportunity for growth and maturation.<ref>{{Harvnb|Briley|1993|pp=112–113}}.</ref>