Two songs, one theme

As we continue with our reflections on 1 Corinthians 13, we find ourselves considering a different approach to understanding love. Paul moves from a description of what love is, to what love is not.

Sometimes understanding the opposite of something helps to bring clarity. Sometimes it enables us to reflect on our own thoughts, opinions and viewpoints and to challenge them in the light of something else. Maybe that’s why Jesus states that if we know the truth then the truth will set us free. Truly understanding something can bring freedom, new life and ability to see clearly, to sift the wheat from the chaff. It can also bring refreshment, but it can also bring challenge.

 The Black Eyed Peas once famously asked ‘where is the love’. Their lyrics focused on all the things that love clearly is not, drawing attention to the multitude of ways in which society exhibits a lack of love. Their song and the video that went with it, clearly brought home the fact that things should be different, but the song really only asks the question and provides limited answers.

 

Michael Jackson raised the same concerns in his song ‘Man in the mirror’ but this time he gave a clear message as to what the solution needed to be if things were to be different.

I'm Starting With The Man In
The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change
His Ways
And No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change

Our theme this week for assemblies is about our own personal response to love. How do we demonstrate it and how do we not. The identification of the ways in which we do not is the place to start if we want to show more love to others. For if we take a look and yet do nothing there will be no answers to the question ‘where is the love’?