Glue (The Greatest of These)

The stuff of wonder came recently in this way: I was introduced to another intriguing songwriter and his music, Conor Oberst, of Bright Eyes. My friend, Jeff, popped in the album, I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning, the other night just to play for the few of us hanging out together the opening of the album. As the album begins, Oberst opens with a brief story that lays the foundation for the first song. He tells of a young woman flying high across the ocean in an airline, on her way to meet her fiancee, when all of a sudden, the plane's engines completely fail and they begin to plummet from their extreme altitude to certain death. The pilot is on the intercom devastated and apologizing profusely in grief. Oberst says the woman turns to the stranger sitting next to her, a man she had not been able to maintain a conversation with earlier, and she asks him in fear, "Where are we going?" The man looks at her with a smile and replies, "We're going to a party ... It's a birthday party. It's your birthday party. Happy Birthday, darling. We love you very very very very very very very much!"

Will I love in my last days? Whether they are in years far removed from where I roam now, or as close around life's corner as I am now in this coffeehouse from where I parked my car just outside? Will there be joy in my voice when the final moments befall me? Will my expression be a testament to the wonder and glory that can be experienced in life ... or another forlorn face displaying the unmistakable message that life is just too hard?

To be honest, the first time I heard that story, my brow furrowed at the knee-jerk thought, "So, was this guy a Christian ... and was this girl? Because, if she is not, he's just lying to her." It only took me a few seconds, as that thought passed through my mind, for me to tragically (and oh so typically) miss the point of the story. The point of the story, as I see it now, having calmed my Christian pride to refrain from reactions into judgment, is joy in life, joy in death, and love for others. ... And this last one is the rub.

A Christian is one who loves any and every person to death; one who loves fully and without judgment through this entire sojourn of life, until he or she comes to the trail's end. There are a million different books (in the Christian and non-Christian markets) that expound on a million different little virtues that humans should practice as they go about this thing called Life - each one is good in the tiny world in which it exists. But I'm beginning to wake up to the reality that there is only one thing to which I am really called by my Creator - only one thing that covers all and sums up all and has any real, lasting merit in Life.

Colossians 3:14. "And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." We are all scraping (especially those of us in the Church) to become efficient in some angle of good living - we want to know what is good and pleasing and then live in such a way. And though this ambition is noble and good-hearted, it produces headaches on a regular basis. Because, once we pick up one pure virtue, we drop or lose track of another, and we spend our life trying to keep all the do's and don't's together like a person struggling to carry too many groceries.

It seems Love is the glue of which we are in desperate need. It binds up all other virtues. Perhaps some of those financial companies advertising on television cannot totally consolidate your loans and expenses and such, but I wonder if, when we love, we are not perfectly consolidating every other little virtue into our lives, binding all things together. Is it safe to say that, at the end of the day, if we can look back on where we have roamed and view ourselves actively loving ourselves and other people, we can be sure we did indeed bless the world and honor our God with our lives that day?

Maybe if we begin to practice this greatest virtue, we will eventually find ourselves in that Day far beyond now, speaking in love to those around us, grinning from ear to ear, and eager for the party.



"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." - 1st Corinthians 13:13