In the days leading up to Valentine’s Day last year, the local radio stations began playing a bevy of love/romance-themed songs. One song that I heard with increasing frequency was the recently released “Say Something,” which featured vocals by Christina Aguilera. With its slow, haunting melody and lyrics, I could see why people would see this as a romantic song. Except that it’s not. The more I heard the song, the more I heard the lyrics – “say something; I’m giving up on you.” During the most romantic times of the year and one of the most popular songs on the radio is about a love that fails.
The theme behind “Say Something” actually fits the description for how many people see themselves – as too much to handle, a burden on loved ones. I once felt this way too, and I had actually built up a rather romantic idea around the belief that I was too flawed to ever completely love. “Say Something” gives us the kind of warped, flawed love that the world is so accustomed to wallowing in, which is “I’ve reached the end of my rope and I have nothing left, so I’m letting go. “
When the Apostle Paul expounds on and explains true love/God’s love in I Corinthians 13, he summarizes his definition with three words – “Love never fails.” While carnal love can (and will) stop, break up, pull away, and give up, God’s love does not. It does not ever stop or give up. The Amplified Bible says that “Love never fails (fades out, comes to and an end, or becomes obsolete).” What moved me out of my twisted fantasy was love. I finally began to understand the greatness of God’s love. In Romans 8:38-39 Paul extols the promise that we can never be taken away from the unchanging, boundless, all-encompassing love of God: “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, no principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God.”
I am not a burden, and there are not any flaws in me – not in God’s eyes. To Him, I am perfect and beautiful and covered in His love. And because I am filled with love, I can love others with the same force that God loves me. I don’t ever have to tell someone that I am giving up on them because the power to love comes from God and He never gives up.
The next time you are thinking of romantic songs, remember that one of the truly more romantic tunes begins like this: “Jesus loves me, this I know…”
Pen in Motion 