True, there are many, many, many of them. From Motown, to Wynette, to opera, to Coldplay — in most any language you can imagine, there are many songs about love. From courting songs, to break up songs, to wedding songs, and romantic songs, from the lyric to the melodic to the symphonic to the tragic, we people like to feel love and in feeling love we sing about love. Love and music just fit, hand in hand.
“It’s very clear, our love is here to stay,” crooned Nat King Cole (song and lyrics by the Gershwin brothers). “In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, they’re only made of clay. But our love is here to stay.” That is a man in love — that is a claim to the eternal.
I often wonder if our hymns or our praise songs aren’t anything more or less than love songs to God?
In one of my favorite books, Prayer, by Richard Foster, he writes in the beginning that our prayer life is like a love song to God. Prayer shows affection, devotion, dependence, and admiration. Prayer is like a song or a poem of trust, hope, faith, and love. I like this. It reminds that our prayer words are not empty words; it reminds that our prayer hopes are not empty hopes. Understanding prayer as a song of love rightly reminds us that prayer is personal and intimate in the best of senses. Perhaps if your prayer life is empty, re-conceiving it as a love song might allow it to become full again.
One of the peculiarities of the book of James is its insistence upon service taking center stage in the life of faith. James saw and sees the works of faith being made manifest and real in the life of Scripture; read James 2:8.
The most interesting part of this little verse to me is the “really fulfill” part. Think about that for a moment — how many of us talk the game, but never play it? How many of us can quote the Scriptures but have never tried to actually apply it?
How many of us have broken up with someone with whom we felt as though we were in love because actions didn’t match words, because the walk and the talk were not in harmony with one another?
For James, service, particularly to the poor, was and is a love song to God — a song of faith and trust, a song of service and celebration. If you sing the hymn, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” you are singing a reflection of James. And in spite of the controversy that the Book of James has caused the church from time to time (just do a word search on Martin Luther and Book of James and see what pops up), it is a tune not only worth knowing but essential to our hearing. Without it we become deaf to the glory of God around us. If we are not to be known by love then by what might we choose to be recognized?
I am certainly grateful that God doesn’t judge me on my singing ability — especially where and when my love songs of service to God are concerned. If God were to judge me thusly, it just might be that God would soon “break up” with me. My walk and my talk are too often going opposite ways instead of conjoined the way James might have them be. For James our service song is not idle tune, it is royal (the Greek word is the word for kingdom and/or king) and it is honorable and it is a high calling. Instead of seeing our service as what we have to do, James sees it as a joyful and royal expression of what we are called to do.
Isn’t that what makes love songs so wonderful, after all? They are not idle words. They test the tension between our speech and our actions (“the smile on your face let’s me know that you need me. There’s a truth in your eyes … you say it best when you say nothing at all” — ah, Alison Krauss). Our love songs express our expectations of benefit from our love; we pour our hearts into them, and risk everything for the object of our affection.
Our service to neighbor, and to God through them (see Matthew 25), should aspire to no less.
Thanks, James. May God forgive me when my tune is a little off key or I don’t commit fully to the lyrics.
Christopher Edmonston is pastor of Howard Memorial Church in Tarboro, N.C.
