What Good Are Love Songs?

Ezekiel must have been an amazing speaker. He warned, he told stories, he reminded people in colorful terms of their history with God.  He called out wicked leaders and exposed corruption in high places.  He predicted the very collapse of the country God had chosen for them and with which he had blessed them.

 He drew great crowds!  The people said, “You’ve got to go hear Ezekiel!  He is such a passionate communicator!  He’s incredible to watch and hear.”  But when all was said and sung, they went home entertained and stimulated, but nothing really changed.

 Ezekiel fell on his face before God for some answers, and God spoke to him giving him even more things to say to the people, things so dire that it tore Ezekiel’s heart out to have to preach them.  Then God said this to Ezekiel: 

 As for you, son of man, your countrymen are talking together about you by the walls and at the doors of the houses, saying to each other, ‘Come, and hear the message that has come from the Lord.’  My people come to you to listen to your words, but they do not put them into practice.  With their mouths they express devotion, but their hearts are greedy for unjust gain. Indeed, to them you are nothing more than one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays an instrument well, for they hear your words, but do not put them into practice. When all this comes true—and it surely will—then they will know that a prophet has been among them. (Ezekiel 33:30-33 NIV)

What God wants is for his creation to not only listen but turn. He woos; he gives a land flowing with milk and honey.  He longs for His children to bask in His love, feast from his amazing supply, love each other, and dwell in His sweet peace.  He longs for us to reflect and spill out mercy to others, joy in His presence, and rest from our frantic and empty pursuit of pseudo-living.  He promises that if we follow the “decrees that give life,” we will surely live.

There is still time to turn.  There is still time to do more than enjoy the music and the poetry. There’s time to internalize the message and let the music draw us into the dance God intended life to be. 

Once there were prophets, but we wouldn’t hear them.
Once there were wonders; we wouldn’t believe.
Fire and manna once rained down from heaven;
Great mighty winds once parted the seas.

When we were blindest, God sent his vision;
When we were deaf, He spoke and we heard.
The Light of the World walked through our darkness—
Jehovah, Himself, the Incarnate Word.

But what good are love songs, if they don’t make us lovers?
Why be an eagle that won’t spread its wings?
Why write our hearts out?  We’re not moved by the passion,
And if love songs don’t change us, then why do we sing?          

Lyric: Gloria Gaither©Hanna Street Music (BMI)
Woody Wright Wouldhewrite Music(ASCAP)

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Go Ask

There is no such thing as a “risk-free faith”.  We mortals want one, of course.  So did those who walked with Jesus when He was literally walking the physical places He frequented with His friends.  We, as they, want to have the advantages of faith without having to make a fool of ourselves by buying into something we can’t actually prove. 

Those who walked with Jesus were privy to some amazing happenings.  They saw the 5,000 fed with a kid’s lunch.  They saw the man so crazed by demon spirits that he had to be chained in the cemetery to keep him from destroying himself or attacking others, freed at Jesus’s command to become a peaceful citizen, clothed and in his right mind.  They saw lepers healed, the deaf made to hear, the blind given sight, and the lame healed to walk.

Yet, after three years of walking by His side, these followers bombarded Him with questions that were basically asking for Jesus to reduce the risk factor of belief.  One of them asked why He didn’t reveal Himself to the world at large so that proving He was the Son of God would be easier, less risky.  Jesus’s answer was simple, yet anything but fool-proof.  He said that they had to risk loving Him first before His certain identity would be revealed to them.  “I will only reveal myself to those who love and obey me.  The Father will love them too, and we will come to them and live with them.” (John 14:22 LB)

In other words: love and obey first; only then will confirming certainty begin to settle into your souls.  Still today are we asking for a faith we can turn on and off like a faucet when we are in trouble or when we’re in a situation that “faith” is an asset?  But risk-free faith is no faith at all.

I love the story of the man who was blind from birth.  Everybody knew he was blind and had seen him grow up without sight.  Instead of showing compassion, we see the disciples wanting explanations.  They asked Jesus whether this blindness was caused by the sin of his parents or his own. Jesus said the darkness was to show the light. Obviously, Jesus was implying more than the physical darkness a blind man sees, but the darkness of missing the message that Jesus is the light for all kinds of darkness.  Jesus put spit-and-dirt mud on the man’s eyes, then told him to go wash it off in the pool of Siloam.

Instead of rejoicing with the now sighted man, the religious circle around him continued the interrogation about the validity of the method, the timing, the history, and the motivation for Jesus’s miracle.  Finally, in exasperation, the once-blind man said “I don’t know!  I don’t know whether he’s good or bad.  All I know is, I was blind but now I see!”

The only test tube for proving what faith is or does is to risk loving and see the result in the lives of those who “were blind but now can see.”  Risk-free faith is an oxymoron.  In real life there is no such thing.  If we want a proof for faith, go ask the blind man.  Fall in love with the Master and questions will be superfluous.

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Come for Supper

Think of your best memories: vacations, holidays, family gatherings, life-altering conversations, relations, joyful happenings.  More likely than not, they involved food.  Perhaps it was a picnic by the lake, or maybe one of the gatherings around the table at grandma’s house.  Was it that delicious habit of sharing a cold watermelon on the front porch on a hot afternoon, or the barbeques at a favorite uncle’s back yard after a family game of football or volleyball? 

Could it be that more barriers are broken down around the kitchen table than around the conference table?  Could more church disagreements be mended if we still had more “all day singings with dinner on the grounds” and fewer finance committee meetings?

I’m with Leonard Sweet; let’s bring back the table. (From Tablet to Table—NavPress)  I vote for returning the kitchen table to its rightful place as the center of our homes, and celebrating the place homecooked food plays--or could play--in a society more and more drawn to the ”virtual reality” of electronic games and less and less to the face-to-face reality of a lively discussion around the family or community table.

If we think back, most of our best memories are connected to some special recipe that no one could make like grandma or those barbequed meatballs “we always had at cook-outs by the creek.” How many relationships could be restored or initiated if we took the time to extend an invitation to “join us for supper” or “stop by for coffee.” Eating out for dinner (or running by the drive-up) may be good for a change or convenient on band or sports practice nights, but is not the same as “supper.”  The words “dinner” and “supper” are not quite synonymous. Supper means everyone is home and around the table, passing around the green beans and mashed potatoes and all talking at once. Supper is love and acceptance and something to say.

Can any child or teen-ager resist sharing his or her day at school when the first thing to greet them when they bound through the door of the kitchen are hot chocolate chip cookies and a tall glass of cold milk? For me it was the conversations around our dining room table that made the world of opportunity open up to me and began my pursuit of God’s best for my life. For many of us it was “table talk” that drew us in or healed our hearts when we were the stranger or floundering for some reason.

It’s no accident that even when we “walk through the valley of the shadow of death,” the great Shepherd has promised to prepare a table before us--even in the presence of our enemies--and to spread for us, his bride, a great marriage supper when we finally get home.  And, as my friend Bob Benson used to say, there will be only round tables in heaven; at round tables we can look into each other’s eyes, and we can always squeeze in a couple more chairs!

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Plumb Lines and Levels

Photo by Angela Kellogg

My Daddy was a carpenter.  I grew up making “villages” for my miniature people and animals out of piles of sawdust and pinning curls of wood shavings into my hair when I was pretending to be a princess.  I became familiar with Daddy’s tools, and he showed me how to use them: the plain, the saws, the sanders, and, of course, hammers, nails and screwdrivers.  To this day I love beautiful woods with interesting grains and can’t help running my hands over their smooth polished surfaces.

Photo by Angela Kellogg

One of my father’s tools often made its way into his sermons.  It was his “plumb line”, a piece of heavy metal shaped like a tiny child’s top and tied to a piece of twine.  He used it as the acid test on vertical supports like wall framing, beams, pillars and the finished edges of walls of wood and masonry.  The plumb line was pulled by gravity, so even unlevel ground that could fool the naked eye, couldn’t fool the plumb line.  If the plumb line said the board was straight, it was straight.  Cross beams could then be lined up on the horizontal and their accuracy could be measured with the “level”, a wooden board with a hole in the center across which two tiny tubes of oil had been fixed, each with a bubble inside.  The “plumb line” and the ”level” measured the quality of a carpenter’s work and predicted whether or not, years later, the plaster applied to that wall would crack or the floor joists laid would creak.  The plumb line and the level could even prophesy whether a hundred years from now a building would still stand straight and strong. 

Photo by Angela Kellogg

There are in any age, at any time, winds of public opinion, changing trends, and popular viewpoints.  There are styles of dress, transportation, décor and behavior.  There are “fads” and “stars” and “influencers” and “idols”.  There is political rhetoric mainly designed to get votes by appealing to voters’ immediate material advantage and current felt needs.

But there is only one perfect model and one accurate measuring stick that is trustworthy.  It is the “plumb line” of God’s word and the walking, living Word – Christ himself, the great leveler.  Against this Living Word everything else must be measured if it is to stand the winds of change and the storms of time.

The prophet Amos lived at a time not unlike our own.  It was a time of control freaks, self-sufficiency and affluence, yet a time when the poor were too often oppressed and injustice was an accepted practice.  Religious performance was common but spiritual integrity and real obedience to God was uncommon.  Here in his own words Amos said: “The Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, checking it with a plumb line to see if it was straight”. 

And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?”

I answered, “A plumb line.”

And he replied, “I will test my people with a plumb line……” (Amos 7:7-8a)

Jesus was a carpenter. He would have been very familiar with this measuring device. He came to be the living, walking plumb line so that our lives would stand straight and strong, enduring and withstanding all the pressures of the times. He asks us to be citizens of another Kingdom, and to measure wealth, success, acceptance, and status by another measuring device than the fickle opinion of the current culture. It is an eternal edifice that we are building with the moments and choices of this day.

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