I post this about every two years…and it’s time again. Fred Rogers beautifully captures what it means to follow Jesus, to live a life of love, and to honor the image of God in every single person. He may not use Jesus-y language but he lives it out and it’s inspiring to say the least.
Enjoy.
These lyrics just might change your life…
Lives are like retractible pencils
If you push them too hard they’re gonna break
And people are like paper dolls
Paper dolls and people, they’re a similar shape
Love is like a roll of tape
It’s real good for making two things one
But just like that roll of tape
Love sometimes breaks off before you were done
Another way that love is similar to tape
That I’ve noticed
Is sometimes it’s hard to see the end
You search on the roll
Search on the roll
With your fingernail
Again and again
And again and again
And again.
Brown paper, white paper
Stick it together with the tape
The tape of love
The sticky stuff
Brown paper, white paper
Stick it together with tape
The tape of love
The sticky stuff.
Brown paper, white paper
Paper paper Stick it together with tape
Paper paper The tape of love
People people
People people
Pencil pencil
Pencil pencil
Paper paper
Put the pencil to the paper
Give the paper to the people
Let the people read about the sello tape
Oh baby baby
Yeah
Brown paper, white paper
Stick it together with tape
The tape of love
The sticky stuff
Yeah
Ooh brown
Brown paper, white paper
Stick it together with tape
The tape of love
Say it
Sticky
Stick stick
Stick it together
Ye-yeah
No words to post today, but I do feel as though I need to share this video with you. This was the song I came out of anesthesia singing. No joke. I couldn’t stop singing THIS song (and two others: “here we come a wastling” and a Portuguese worship song).
My wife teases me because I don’t notice the lyrics to music. We can be listening to the same song and I’ll have no idea what the songs about. Even when I try really hard to listen to the words in a song I find that I’m barely capable of doing so. What’s my problem? Do you know how many times I listened to Kansas’ “Carry on Wayward Son” while I worked at Outback? Do you know how much of that song I can sing? Yeah, it’s a bit pathetic.
For some time I’ve written all of this off on the way my brain takes in and stores information. Music does not in any way aid in my learning, in fact I have a hard time learning anything if music is playing in the background. And while I realize that there’s probably a lot of truth in this, I think I’ve discovered the real core issue. Contemporary Christian music.
I grew up listening to Contemporary Christian Music. Have you listened to it? For every song that makes churchgoers weep (due to its powerful lyrics not it’s terrible melody…though both could be true) there are three songs whose lyrics are painfully cheesy, trite, and shallow. The reason I’m not skilled at hearing the lyrics to music is that I learned early on that the lyrics to music was not worth listening to! Contemporary Christian music made me deaf and ignorant!
Dear contemporary Christian music, I will get you back for what you’ve done to me. Do you realize how many times I’ve sang loudly the wrong lyrics to a song in public? Do you realize that you’ve made karaoke that much more difficult? Do you realize how you’ve hurt my future? Just wait, I’ll get you and I’ll get you where it hurts. Michael W. Smith, I’ve got my eyes on you.
Lets get this out of the way right up front: I love Jesus. I do. I love worshiping Jesus. I think its good to tell him that I love him. I think its good to remind myself that he loves me too. I do.
But can we be honest for a second and admit that the last ten years of worship music are kind of…awkward. Southpark might be right in saying that all we do is sing love songs to Jesus. I love the moment in that Southpark episode when record label executives try to ask Cartman whether he is actually in love with Jesus.
Music is powerful. It speaks to our soul, it captures our heart, and it captures moments in time and imortalizes them in our collective memories. With regard to worship, however, I think we’ve lost some of its potency. Rarely does it capture us up into a grand narrative, a story bigger than ourselves. Rarely does it inculcate us with the truth of Scripture, rarelycalling us into community or propelling us toward loving our neighbors more fully…what our worship music does is remind us how much we love Jesus.
Too much of a good thing is not good. Maybe we should stop just talking about how much we love Jesus and capture some of our story in song, capture some of our ancient historical story in song, capture truths about God in song, sing songs that invite us to live differently and more graciously in our world…instead…we just tell Jesus that we love him…a lot…
Too much of a good thing? I say yes, and awkwardly so!