love is....

Wassup people? I've been really busy as of late with finishing summer sessions and tutoring. It's at least allowed me to ignore the news (which is always a good thing) and just moving from point to point and focusing on getting work done. In the meantime, it's allowed me to listen to more music and I've been pleased with the new Chico DeBarge. A lot of hype has been around Maxwell's return but to be honest, I just haven't been wowed by his album. It has a few decent cuts but the only one I really love is Pretty Wings. Also a little disappointed with Chrisette Michele sophomore effort, a few good cuts but nothing to write home about. I have to say I love the new Mos Def, he seems like he's back to form now that he's with a new label and happy.

I've also just been playing my Itunes library straight through as I go through the day and I've come to a realization. I believe that after reading the Shack and coming to a fuller understanding of God, that art (movies, music, and books) have a skewed version of what love is at times. For example, I've heard this often in my many songs of love: love is pain.....no it's not. Love is a byproduct of a fundamental choice: do you wish to know the fullness of God and His nature, because He is love. And beyond the cursory: "God is Love" Rev Run phrase and t-shirt slogans, if you focus on that statement, the truth is inevitable, you can only know true love if you know the true God. People throw the word around not realizing a fundamental thing; the only true statement of love can be made if you can in replace the word "love" with "God". I hear the phrase "love is joy, love is pain" so by that reasoning God is joy, God is pain. He's not pain, He endured pain as a man in order for us to experience daily joy.

We have thousands of songs that talk about love will cause you such sorrow but it's worth it for the sake of love. That's a lie and it implies we have to suffer to know true love when it's actually the opposite, we can experience true love because Love suffered on a cross 2000 years ago. Love is not conditional, He's an absolute, He's not there one day and gone the next. People talk about falling out of love, what happens is people choose to no longer know Love and put Him at the center of their life. They chase after things that offer a shallow thrill and all the Love gives them they reject because they get distracted with things that aren't important.

Other songs speak of love making you hold on to someone not worth holding on too. Fear does that and a false hope that one cannot make it without the other person and one day that person will realize that too. Wishful thinking most times.

So the question is: does life imitate art or vice versa? Do we do them because it's in our nature or do we do it because we hear it and we get these romantic notions? I'm not saying all songs have missed it but too many do giving Love a bad name when He is more than perfect. Give it a thought and start making the switch when you hear those songs about love. If it isn't beautiful, holy, precious, and wonderful...it ain't Love.....

I'm out....