RE-TUNING THE RADIO

We travelled another 190 miles today and finally arrived in Niagara Falls, New York State. We are staying 6 miles from the Falls so looking forward to doing the tourist things tomorrow and looking stupid in the plastic raincoats for an experience of a lifetime seeing and hearing the Falls at extremely close quarters.

It’ll be great to listen to something different! That is no comment on Kerry but rather on the radio stations we have been listening to on our 724 mile journey from our hosts in Chicago to our bedroom 6 miles from Niagara Falls. There are hundreds of stations to choose from so every now and again we press the ‘seek’ button to see which one is next. This method has meant that we have stumbled across several Christian music stations and listened to some well known Christian singers, bands and songs and been introduced to many new ones. The ‘best’ lyric we have heard so far is – I will apologise for this before you read it – ‘So Heaven meets earth like a sloppy, wet kiss.’ No, I couldn’t believe it either, but doing a search on Google, it is actually right!

It comes from a song by John Mark Mcmillan and is called, ‘He Loves’ (if you don’t believe me look at:

http://www.seekalyric.com/song/John_Mark_Mcmillan/How_He_Loves

Apparently the Dave Crowder band included the song on an Album but changed this lyric to, "Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss".

Should we start a theological debate about the original lyrics or the changed ones? Is it just too sentimental anyway and not appropriate in a worship song or doesn’t it matter? Or simply forget about it and re-tune the radio? I have to say that when I heard it, it made me laugh, say, ‘I don’t believe I just heard that,’ and ‘I hope we never sing that one!’ Sorry if I have upset anyone who loves that song and maybe I shouldn’t worry about it, but it isn’t a great line, or is it?

It also gets me back to thinking about what Christians agree and disagree with, what it’s worth fighting for and what it is best to leave alone. Too often we can end up fighting between ourselves over issues we think are important rather than the real battle against injustice and poverty.

Here in the US there are many, many traffic lights – every intersection – and very few roundabouts – there are even pictures of how to drive round a roundabout as you approach them - but there are also junctions where the instruction is ‘ALL STOP’. So everyone stops and waits for one car to move and the etiquette seems to be that the car that got to the junction first gets to go first and everyone takes their turn in order.

I wonder if there are times in Christian discussion and debate when the instruction needs to be, ‘ALL STOP’. Then we might learn to listen first and then together navigate the way ahead.

How would you finish the lyric –‘So Heaven meets earth like.......’? Perhaps I will just re-tune the radio again.