Love in Any Language

I’ve been on a Sandi Patty kick lately – feel free to roll your eyes!  I remember listening to her when I was younger.  My sister and I would pop in her music while doing housework and try to hit the high notes.  Needless to say, I never got there…  There’s one song she sang that has stuck with me, almost word for word, for all these years - “Love in Any Language”.  This song is so incredibly powerful and so terribly convicting…

I listened to this song again today and really evaluated the way I love people.  What does it really mean to love…not just to show love, but to speak love.  Showing love is easy – smile at a stranger, open the door for someone, send flowers, give a hug.  But to speak love – what does that look like?

I’ve been thinking a lot about that and I think that to speak love means that you have to be willing to actually SPEAK!  Sounds obvious, but think about it.  How many times do we give the polite smile to a stranger or kindly wave to someone as we pass by?  I know I’m guilty.  What if I actually went up to the person and spoke?  It doesn’t have to be some deep Christian conversation.  Just something simple like, “So, how are you today?” 

I went to a Southern Gospel concert on Sunday night.  The main singer said something very powerful – “You might be the only Christian influence a person sees today, so don’t waste it.”  Wow!  So, when I’m pushing my cart through the grocery store and really just want to get out of there – maybe I can smile and tell someone to go ahead of me in line.  Maybe when I’m beyond tired and just want to sit and watch TV – I can stop and talk to my husband instead.  Such simple things that are so hard to do!

But my thinking didn’t stop there.  The whole idea of the song is to love people who are different from me.  Love can break down any wall, any barrier.  I believe that we as Christians have failed in this area.  We’ve let racial barriers, language barriers, social class barriers, educational barriers, religious barriers stop us from loving people – and we’ve taken the easy way out by just branding some people as “unlovable”.  Think about it.  How many times have we politely smiled at someone and then rolled our eyes as we walked away thinking, “Poor schmuck!  He’s a mess.  I can’t believe someone could

                                                        live like that!”  We are ALL guilty of it, myself included.

In Sandi Patty’s song, she sings:

          Love in any language
          Straight from the heart
          Pulls us all together
          Never apart
          And once we learn to speak it
          All the world will hear
          Love in any language
          Fluently spoken here

Our love for Christ should overflow into love for others – all others!  It should pull us together, not apart!  Love should be spoken fluently everywhere in this world – but instead we see judgment and condemnation.  As Christians, we should be in the business of showing people how much we have in common and how precious that is…easier said than done!

          We teach the young our differences
          Yet look how we're the same
          We love to laugh, to dream our dreams
          We know the sting of pain

          Oh maybe when we realize
          Just how much there is to share
          We'll find too much in common
          To pretend it isn't there

          Though the rhetoric of government
          May keep us worlds apart
          There's no misinterpreting
          The language of the heart

              

Just like the last part of the song says – there is no misinterpreting the language of the heart.  Let me challenge you today to look at your own heart.  Ask yourself what language your heart is speaking.  When I looked at my heart today, I realized that I don’t always do the greatest job of loving.  I’m often not very good at loving the unlovable.  So today, I challenge each of us to speak love – especially to the “unlovable”!  Why??? Because there are many days when I am the unlovable and Christ loves me anyway.  So, love the unlovable and when people watch us in our Christian life, they can say, “Yes, love is fluently spoken here” – to the glory and praise of God! 

I’m still new to blogging and don’t know how to attach links to songs.  Look up the song at this website.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md0dTgNpGq0  It is unbelievably awesome!!!  Enjoy!

Melissa