isn't He wonder-ful?


Last night a random foray in my dot-mac inbox brought me into contact with the latest iTunes newsletter (they come out weekly). Out of curiosity, I clicked on the link for Edward Norton's celebrity playlist. His comments were eloquent but down-to-earth (I liked his use of "cull"), but I didn't have much interest in the two bands he championed. Who else had provided a celebrity playlist? I wondered. About 100 are currently available, most by bands or artists I don't know.

Moby, predictably, supplied a list of protest songs, but none caught my attention. Then I saw Angelique Kidjo's name, which I know mostly from my days at McGraw-Hill. I'd only heard a couple samples of her music before, with mixed reactions. It didn't make me run out and buy a CD — but I know that her project in general is pretty impressive (at least intellectually). So I checked out the playlist. And I was intrigued. I liked her range — James Brown to U2 to Serge Gainsbourg — and the way she wrote about the music. It made me want to listen.

And hell, hadn't I just received some birthday cash? Hadn't I just recently learned of Serge? It was time I found out what he sounded like. On an impulse, praying my dial-up wouldn't be "inexplicably lost" mid-download of the 10 MP3s, I elected to buy all but the James Brown song I could burn from my own CD.

This morning when I got up, I checked my computer: all 10 songs were now in my "purchased music" file! (Along with Michael Jackson, Warren Zevon, The Weather Girls and Norah Jones.) Taking a breath, I clicked play and prepared to hear my gamble. And it was good. The Stevie Wonder song especially. I've heard great things about Songs in the Key of Life — which clearly is a major reference-point for other musicians — but never really heard it. On the basis of "As" though, I am definitely adding it to my "buy" list.

Signing off the internet, I hauled my laptop out to the living room to hook it up to my stereo. As iTunes began playing over my stereo, I set about preparting a late mid-afternoon "breakfast" of burned chocolate-chip pancakes moist enough to pass for that tart bread the Ethiopians eat. But I had to hear Stevie again. I went over to the laptop and skipped back the few tracks, then continued preparing my daily latte. The song starts out slow with this R&B-type sound I'd normally pass on — but boy does he go someplace good! The end of the song is like full-on gospel. What did Angelique say? Something about how he sounds like he could go on forever — and you wish he would.

As I was wiping up my coffee mess, part of a lyric caught my ear: "true love asks for nothing." In that instant, thoughts and buried feelings fused with music and I wept against the cupboard.

Why the song should touch me so deeply, I'm not quite sure, but I looped it several times this afternoon. I've been dealing with a lot this week — the loss of a close friend who has decided I no longer meet her needs as she desires (sometimes demands), and the reality of death and AIDS in Africa, which I discussed with another close friend yesterday. The reality of the world, when faced head on, is simply brutal.

Maybe it surprises you to hear me say that. I'm sure some people who hear me talk or get a sense of my expectations deem me one of the greatest idealists you've ever known. But that's what faith in God does to you. The more you know and taste of Him, the more you engage your longings for a different life. Desires that, from a biblical perspective, are a kind of psychic longing and memory for the perfection that once was.

And yet my faith is simultaneously grounded, absolutely, in unrelenting honesty. I'm not interested in a faith based on lies or wishful thinking. Nor is God. Repeatedly throughout the Old Testament He makes clear that He is not interested in the false piety of religiosity, but the genuine sacrifice of a contrite and honest heart. Being in restored relationship with Him requires me to face some of the most unpleasant facts about myself — things I can barely stand to acknowledge, much less let others see. But the remarkable thing is that God does not abandon me as I fear any sane being would do, should they see and know these things. He stands beside me, helping me through the always-difficult, painful "surgery" necessary to address and correct my brokenness and sin.

Why go through such short-term pain? Because, from a biblical perspective, it is part of God's ongoing work to bring restoration to this earth — which will culminate in the new heaven and new earth prophesied in Revelation. The more I learn and know of God, the more I am brought into contact with this unattainable ideal whose beauty I nonetheless recognize insofar as it causes others to treat me better and love me more deeply. The ideal is devastating when I contemplate my own (in)ability to attain it, but intoxicating when I think of experiencing it in others. And to some degree I have.

My pastor often says that in Jesus one finds that "I am more wretched, flawed and degenerate than I could ever admit, and more loved than I could ever imagine." The more I learn and know of Jesus, the more hopeful I become for a quality of life most of us never allow ourselves to admit we want, and the more unflinching in my assessment of the wreckage that is this life. You can't fix the problem until you have fully apprehended it. This world is much worse than most of us allow ourselves to admit, but I believe God intends to restore all of it to the glory and beauty He originally intended for us to enjoy and participate in.

Partly I think Stevie moved me because his music simultaneously pierced me with the truth — and pain — of how much we fall short of that love-which-asks-for-nothing, and offered a glimpse of heaven more compelling than those tepid visions we've been schooled to long for. "As" is in many ways a praise song — but a praise song done right, for once. This is going to sound weird, but I suddenly found myself so grateful to God for the African people and the unique way He reveals His character through their culture.

Some time ago my pastor spoke about racism. He argued (using examples from the early Christian church) that we all need each other because each culture and people-group has simultaneous areas of insight and blindness. Without all those perspectives brought together, we can never get a complete picture of God. I think he's right. And even now as I listen to Stevie for the umpteenth time, tears prick my eyes at the beauty he conveys. It's like that moment in the midst of an overcast day, when clouds are heavy with rain and storm, but the sun nonetheless shoots beams of dazzling radiance through all the layers of darkness. The trees still glisten with the recent downpour, but suddenly all is briefly glorious.

For a minute, I can almost see — and hear — what it will be like. A vast, green, rolling plain stretches out, filled with people joined in one frenzied, ecstatic chorus: "I'll be lovin' you until ... the night becomes the day ... I'll be lovin' you ... always."

posted @ 04:25 PM on Wed - July 14, 2004 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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