This hidden obsession...

I like Spotify. Other streaming audio sources, like Pandora, don't allow me to connect from a non-US IP. Spotify is not based in the US... different set of rules, I guess.

Taylor Swift dumped Spotify. I hadn't noticed until I saw it on the news. I "unliked" her enough at the outset so that she wasn't popping up anymore in my radio channnels.

I think my granddaughters get some sick pleasure out of the pained look on my face when they tell me they listen to her. Of course, payback is sweet.  I know when to turn up the volume on certain artists that I know will make everyone else leave the room.

I occasionally stream channels that mix in new stuff that I would not find on my own. It fascinates me how I can't wait to click the next button on some songs and then almost instantly can be blown away by another that I knew nothing about... even from a genre that I would not have chosen.

But try sharing this moving experience with friends by reciting some of the lyrics to them... or quoting them in a blog. It's almost embarrassing to share song lyrics like this. What is it about the music and the pathos in the singer's voice that conjures up the memories, the smells, the soaring thoughts that fill in the blanks in lyrics that often seem barebones and dry without them? And the connections made are so personal. The song I am about to quote took me to places the writer probably didn't anticipate.

All of this to preface a song that I had not heard until this week... here is the end of the first stanza and the refrain:

I go out with a friend
Maybe a little music might help
But I can't pretend
I wish I was somewhere else
REFRAIN:
I wanna watch the ocean bend
the edges of the sun then
I wanna get swallowed up in
An ocean of love
VENTURA...by Lucinda Williams, Album "World without Tears" 

By the time she gets to, "I wish I was somewhere else", I'm like, ME TOO! By the time she gets through, "I wanna get swallowed up in an ocean of love", I go, MAN, WHO DOESN'T!?

Later she calls it, "this hidden obsession".

Another song for my "Christian Apologetics" folder... a prequel to Christian praise about finally finding our way home.

The longing from inside our well of emptiness, the never quite satisfied sensation of, "there has to be more, but it must be somewhere else". No matter what we experience: the adrenaline rush, the promotion, the new relationship, the vice... it's never enough. Our empty space probably isn't that big, but we leak like a sieve. That's the nature of temporal pleasure: it's temporal. There and gone again.

That inner longing is what's left of our dead spirit, all that sin stole from us. Like a recent amputee who can still feel the now absent limb. Addicts and atheists, and everyone in between, advertise the loss, and by doing so, validate the existence of the God who is there... somewhere. Sin messed us up so badly that we can stare perfect love in the face and not recognize it. 

Yet we remain dogged. We want it all, every day and every moment; and if getting swallowed up in an ocean of love comes with it... wow, better yet.

We can't retrieve what sin took away. But we can get it back! Paul states in Col 2:10 that we are "complete in Him" (Christ).

Opening our hearts to the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, allows Him to come in and fill the void. Where there was never joy, permanence, filled to full and overflowing, or a clear reason to live, there is that and more now. He fills in such a way that we know we're home. Satisfaction swells, contentment gains ground, love compels.

“And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.” (Ro 5:5)

Color me crazy... I can't get through a song like this without tears... 

• tears of thankfulness (How did I ever survive without Jesus?)... 
• tears of compassion (Dear God, there are folks out there who want as acutely as I did)...
• tears of hope (Grace is greater than all our sin; God is greater than all of our needs.)...

“The meek shall eat and be satisfied: they shall praise the LORD that seek him: your heart shall live for ever.” (Ps 22:26)

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