"Love Songs"

Earlier this morning I was listening to the "Feist" station on Pandora and I was surprised by how many "love songs" were playing.  I guess I typically avoid that kind of music (even though I do like Feist).  However, It is pretty difficult  to listen to pop music of any kind without hitting a "love song".  Now you many be wondering why I am putting "love song" in quotes.  I felt compelled to put it in the quotations because as I was listening to the lyrics (a very important part of the music for me) I realized just how selfish and childish sounding most of the songs were. They were not so much about love that endures, a love that is faithful like the one described in 1 Corinthians 13, but about a feeling, even sometimes it seemed, just hormonal compulsion, and maybe at it's grandest, a reflection on life.

Now, to many people, maybe this is what "love" is...I don't know.  Yeah, it probably is.  :o( How disappointing and trite if that's what "love" relationships end up being.

I am grateful that Jesus calls me to a much greater love than that.  I am grateful for the imperfection and yet commitment I experience through Chris and my marriage.  We have our struggles but our marriage (our love) is based on something and Someone who created the Heavens and Earth and sustains them by His being.  Our "love" (blast that word, it's been so abused!) is something that expands with us.  It is not in a dream, it is not in a vaccuum.  It is shaped and forged and strengthened and even spilled out in and on a community of friends and family.  

I am going to put all of 1 Corinthians 13 on here and I want to note that I know this isn't about a marriage or love relationship -- but it's explanation of love is the one all kinds of love need -- friendship, family, marriage, community, etc.  How much greater and deeper and richer is that love of Jesus (and how much greater and deeper and richer does it make our lives).

1 Corinthians 13
"If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice with unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge , it will be done away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.  When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.  But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; bu the greatest of these is love."