Higher Love: The Annotated Remix

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Christopher Rush

The following is a chapel address given April 20, 2012, with occasional musical accompaniment.

Entrance1

The title of this message is “Think About It: There Must Be Higher Love … Without It Life is Wasted Time … Bring Me a Higher Love … Where’s that Higher Love I’ve Been Thinking Of?”2  The subtitle this message is “Where is Chaka Khan when you need her?”3  I admit this is rather a lengthy title for a brief message, but it couldn’t really be helped.  I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t play that song as his entrance music instead of Sly and the Family Stone?  That’s certainly a good question, and the answer will undoubtedly be even better.  The answer is that it sets the mood quite well for what I want to talk about today: the nature of God’s higher love and the powerful ability of music to help us experience and delight in that love better than most anything else.  This will be done rather subtly, as a vast majority of the content of this message is taken from lyrics of songs.  See if you can identify all the songs used in this message.  As this opening song indicates, it is music that brings this worshipful experience about.  Music has always been closely tied to worship, communication, and thus loving God and one another: the Levitical tabernacle musicians; David’s role as court musician to soothe Saul; Elisha called for a musician in 2 Kings 3 to better hear the word of the Lord; Paul enjoins us in Ephesians 5 to speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (which is what I am doing to you here today); around God’s throne forever are beings singing and worshiping God.  These functions (worship, communication, praise) are all driven by one major impetus: higher love2.

Think About It: There Must Be Higher Love

Let us approach these thoughts on love through the framework of our title, beginning with the first line “think about it: there must be higher love.”  Immediately Brother Steve recalls to our attention love is connected to the intellect — he doesn’t say “feel about it,” or “emote about it,” or “sense it.”  He tells us to think about it.  Our memories are immediately drawn to Luke 10:27 and its synoptic fellows: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”  Loving the Lord with our minds is part of the primary commandment, the most important thing we are to do — this is the person we are supposed to be.  Love is not just an emotional component, though it partly is (and Brother Steve is also mindful of this when he shortly after this says to “look inside your heart and I’ll look inside mine,” in an effort to find this higher love).  It surely is partly emotional, since as human beings we cannot fully divide are emotive selves from our ratiocinative selves.  Sometimes we try, for various reasons and this can be temporarily fruitful, though to be fully human we must see everything wholly, from both sides; we always need to hear both sides of the story4.  This includes loving with our minds.  Since love is intellectual, love is rational, love is volitional, love is self-aware.  Since we have focused many times over the years on the intellectual nature of love, we can move from this notion of love being self-aware to the second aspect of our framing title: there must be higher love.

C.S. Lewis’s “argument from desire” may be applicable here5.  Lewis says we as human creatures primarily desire things because there exist satisfaction for those desires: we hunger because food exists to satisfy that hunger; we yearn for community because other people exist and there is God with whom to have community.  If a yearning exists innately for something apparently unfillable in this present existence, that should cause us to suspect another aspect to existence exists — perhaps not one in this present incarnation.  Though some argue against this, most of those counterarguments are built upon a materialistic presuppositional base combined with a neglect of Lewis’s emphasis on “innate” desire.  He’s not talking about the older child “oh, I wish I could fly” sort of nonsense — that’s not an innate thing.  Children are innately afraid of falling, not innately yearning to slip the surly bounds of earth and say “excuse me while I kiss the sky6.”  Perhaps the reason people yearn to live forever is because they, in fact, will.  Since we yearn for higher love, and surely we all do — we all yearn not just for love but a fully, wholly satisfying love that is divine7, transcendent, superior to the love we get even from our most intimately loved fellow humans — if Lewis’s argument is valid, and most rational people agree it is, as brother Steve says, “there must be higher love” — a satisfaction for this yearning exists.  It must exist — whether down in the heart (where? down in the heart8), hidden in the stars above, or overtly displayed in the stars above — but not just because we want it, since we have just been reminded to “think about it.”  It’s not there solely because we want it; it is already there, a priori, innate, uncreated, fully self-existent, and perhaps almost coincidently, just so happens to be the satisfaction to a deep-felt innate desire, one of the most primal, driving needs we as mortal beings have.  This love draws us to itself, lifting us higher and higher, and keeps on lifting us higher and higher, higher than we’ve ever been lifted before.  Once, we were downhearted, disappointment was our closest friend; but then when we met this higher love, disappointment disappeared and never showed its face again.  I said this love keeps on lifting us higher and higher9, intentionally and willingly.  Almost as if it is a personal being … but we shall get there soon enough.  Perhaps you are also wondering if this love can take you high enough — can it fly you over yesterday10?  Accepting all I’ve done and said11?  All of us get lost in the darkness; all of us do time in the gutter12.  You aren’t alone in wondering if Higher Love can build an emerald city with these grains of sand?  Will it take me places I’ve never known?  Will it make it all new that’s old?  It can do that; indeed, it can do that13.  Don’t turn your back on and slam the door on those12 who truly love you, banging their heads outside your wall14.  Turn around and stand and don’t be afraid to let your true colors show15.  The alternative, as we shall now see, is not good.

Without It, Life is Wasted Time

Brother Steve next tells us without this higher love, life is wasted time.  Not only must divine, transcendent love exist, but assuming it didn’t for a moment, life without it would not be worth living.  How miserable people without this Higher Love must be, to be created in the image of someone they have not met — not yet16.  Immediately our thoughts are taken to what many call the definitive love passage of the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 13.  No matter how erudite or persuasive our communication abilities are, says St. Paul, even to the point of being able to converse with the angelic realm, without higher love our insights and offerings become substanceless cacophony.  Even were we to comprehend the mystical unity of knowledge and ideas so fully even Cardinal Newman was jealous17, without higher love our lucidity becomes silent18 and our perspicacity becomes mutely obtuse.  Were we to have faith that could crumble the mountains into the sea19 without higher love, we would be less voluminous than crumbled mountains scattered to the sea (and the mountains would win again20).  If we give ourselves away, and give ourselves away, and we give, and we give, and we give ourselves away21 even to the point of voluntary self-immolation, without higher love we have given nothing and we have gained nothing.  We need this higher love in everything we do but more than that it needs to be who we are.  We need this higher love brought to us, as Brother Steve says: bring me a higher love.  Continuing in 1 Corinthians, Paul encourages us this higher love has already come to us.

Bring Me a Higher Love

How Paul does it is something remarkable: transitioning seamlessly from superlative examples of the absence of this higher love, he metaphorically delineates what this higher love is.  But as N.T. Wright is so astute to remind us, Paul essentially always has the entirety of the Word of God in mind when he writes22 — thus, when Paul quotes or alludes to a particular verse he has the entire chapter or more in mind — and possibly things that weren’t even written down yet, being an apostle who got his revelation directly from God.  Thus, when Paul describes attributes of love it would be fatuous to doubt he has also in mind what was later transcribed for us by St. John in 1 John 4: God is Love.  Paul knew that even if he died before John wrote it.  Since Jesus is God, Jesus is love.  He won’t let you down, and I know He’s mine forever23.  Thus the following attributes are not about an abstract concept, not what some people call just an emotion, these are attributes of God Himself: Higher Love is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not arrogant, not rude, does not insist on its own way (as Paul says in Philippians 2, as Jesus did not think His own innate equality with the Father something to be held on tightly, not that He was afraid of losing control, just that He knew emptying Himself for the salvation of us was perhaps a higher priority).  Higher Love does not laugh at what is not funny; it doesn’t wink at sin; it doesn’t rejoice at wrongdoing; it rejoices with the truth (again confirming the intellectual nature of love and its kinship to uniform reality).  Love broke the bonds and loosed the chains and carried the cross and took my shame and took my pain.  You know I believe it24.  Love believes all things (again, a sign of its intellectual community with what is, and love’s ability to see reality also for what it will be, not just for what it was).  Love never ends.  That’s a pretty remarkable litany of qualities of love as incarnated by Jesus — though perhaps it might even be more accurate to think about love as a kind of anthropomorphism of God Himself.

But then Paul starts to do something even more remarkable here: it’s not enough to just think of Jesus when we think of the attributes of Higher Love, though as we have said from the outset worship and abiding in love through living out this love is predominately what leisure and thus our purpose in life is.  Paul continues to tear down our immature comfort levels by reminding us of the evanescent nature of the sort of things we too-easily embrace or look to for identity and security: prophecies, languages, even knowledge itself (in the spiritual gift sense) —  our understandings of these, no matter how many terminal degrees we have attained in them, are actually pale, puny, shadowy versions of the real truth.  All the substance we think we are is in fact just flash.  We know reality, we know God, we know Higher Love — we love — partially, incompletely, ephemerally.  Later, in the life to come, in the next phase of eternity in which we already are, we will stop seeing each other, stop seeing ourselves, stop seeing God dimly, incompletely, in shadows; in the cold mirror of a glass, I see my reflection pass, see the dark shades of what I used to be.  I said Love rescue me25.  We will then see and live and love effulgently, completely, face-to-face.

We yearn for the sunshine of this Higher Love26 — can anybody find me somebody to love?27 we desperately cry.  Love is such an old-fashioned word, this dim world of superficial delight and lust says in response, attempting to dissuade us from Higher Love.  Higher Love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night and Higher Love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves28.  This is not easy to do.  The world would much rather have us apathetic toward Love than hate it — and sometimes we are there, too.  We don’t even care as restless as we are; we feel the pull in the land of a thousand guilts29.  We must remember, though, that while we can only love partially now, but we can do it — Jesus came to give us Life and that abundantly — we have a down payment of Eternal Life in us now in the Holy Spirit, which is Jesus’ Spirit.  Higher Love has been brought to us.  Love will overcome; this love will make us men; love will draw us in to wipe our tears away30.  But we have to wait for its completion in the life to come.  The rest of it will be brought to us — or, perhaps more likely, we will be brought to this Higher Love when we have finished shuffling off this mortal coil31 and our curtain has been drawn and our hearts can go where our hearts now belong32, forwarding our mail to the place where the streets have no name33, a place that has to be believed in to be seen, where all that you fashion, all that you make, all that you build, and all that you break, all that you measure, all that you feel — all this you can leave behind; you’ve got to leave it behind34.  You can.  You will.  Higher Love is waiting on the other side.  It’s calling us even now!35  Leave behind the childish (not child-like36) ways of speaking, thinking, reasoning, and become mature, holy, elite (not just excellent) by dwelling in this Higher Love — knowing God, each other, ourselves, as we have been known by Higher Love all this time.  It’s a sort of homecoming35, you see.

This abnegation of our vision in the mirror is not easy to do, as we just said, nor is it easy to grasp.  Worlds are turning and we’re just hanging on, facing our fear and standing out there alone2 (at times, we feel).  We are partially in the dark, in enemy-occupied territory, where fear, the mind-killer37, is rampant and fear’s a powerful thing, baby — it can turn your heart black, you can trust; it’ll take your God-filled soul and fill it with devils and dust38 … if you let it.  But we must turn from fear.  Still there’s a yearning and it’s real to you and me, there must be someone who’s feeling for me.  Things look so bad everywhere in this whole world what is fair?  We walk blind and we try to see, falling behind in what could be2.  This is the danger as we go skating away on the thin ice of a new day39.

To respond to this, Paul now does perhaps the most remarkable thing — almost audacious — with this final verse of the chapter.  Faith — a great thing; impossible to live without it — you gotta have faith, faith, faith, I gotta have faith40.  Hope — a great thing; impossible to live without it.  Love — a great thing; impossible to live without it.  We turn away from fear, but we don’t turn to hope.  We don’t turn to faith.  The greatest of these, Paul tells us, is actually love!  Love is greater than faith; love is greater than hope.  Wowzah.  We turn from fear and embrace love.  As best we can, for as long as we can.  I can’t do it perfectly yet, because I’ve been a prisoner all my life and I can say to you we need this Higher Love to take us home because we don’t remember41 how to do it perfectly yet.  So where is that Higher Love I’ve been thinking of?2  It is here.  It is now42.

Where’s that Higher Love I’ve been Thinking of?

The words that I remember from my childhood still are true that there’s none so blind as those who will not see.  And to those who lack the courage and say it’s dangerous to try, well they just don’t know that love eternal will not be denied.  Yes I know it’s going to happen, I can feel you getting near.  And soon we’ll be returning to the fountain of our youth.  And if you wake up wondering, in the darkness He’ll be there — His arms will close around you and protect you with the Truth.  I know You’re out there somewhere, somewhere, somewhere; I know I’ll find You somehow, somehow, somehow; I know I’ll find You somehow and somehow I’ll return again to You43.  But oh, how I wish You were here44.  Right here, right now45.  Now that we know Higher Love is Jesus, and we know what Higher Love has done for us, we already know the answer to Brother Steve’s final question, though as we saw at the beginning of this brief exploration, he knew it already as well — it is both in our hearts and written in the sky above, though not as covertly as he suspected.  The Heavens declare the glory of God, as David says in Psalm 19.  Love is all around no need to waste it46.  It’s not really a question of where love is — we know it is here in part, we know it will be fulfilled later, we just have to wait for it.  Things will be just fine; you and I’ll just use a little patience47.  Brother Steve recognizes this himself: I will wait for it; I’m not too late for it; until then I’ll sing my song to cheer the night along2.  While we are in the long dark night of seeing in a mirror darkly, we are to sing a new song (see how this all ties together) and worship and wait patiently for the Lord.  How long do we sing this song?48  Until Higher Love comes and rescues us: until we can say I’ve conquered my past, the future is here at last, and I stand at the entrance to a new world I can see, the ruins to the right of me will soon have lost sight of me, love has rescued me25 — the Lord of Lords and King of Kings has returned to lead His children home to take us to the New Jerusalem49.

The issue, then, is what do we do in the meantime before the supper of the Mighty One49 is ready?  Every woman and every man needs to take a righteous stand, find the love that God wills and the faith that He commands38.  In the meantime we live a life of grateful worship, of genuine leisure, a life of reflecting however dimly the Higher Love in which we abide, the Higher Love with whom we have a personal relationship since love is a person.  It may feel like a battlefield50 sometimes, but love is a person.  A person who will return to take us home but for now maybe home is where the heart is given up to the One51 who has shown us what love is.  You want to know what love is?  I know He can show you52.  He already has — we celebrated it a few weeks ago, as we have said already.  So what do we do?  Who are we, while we live this life of love, of leisure? while we wait and sing our song?2  Let’s pull all these cords (chords?) together by looking at our final biblical song (in the sense of actually being in the Bible, since just about all the others songs alluded to this afternoon are biblical in the sense of being parallel with the Bible — and we all want to be parallel with the Bible): Psalm 116.

King David reveals great pain in the first stanza; in the midst of such pain and loss, his opening thoughts which recur throughout force us out of our complacency and the comfort of wallowing in our own miseries: I love the Lord, because He has heard my voice and my pleas for mercy.  Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call on Him as long as I live.  David doesn’t require God to do anything — he doesn’t say “because God fixed all my problems, I will then worship Him and love Him” — so far all we know God has done was just listened to what David had to say.  That is enough for him; it is probably even enough for David that God exists.  Is that enough for us?  You are Who You are, God — that’s enough for me.  The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish.  Then I called on the name of the Lord: “Oh Lord,” I pray, “deliver my soul!”  As I have said elsewhen, pretty much all of you have lived lives far more difficult and painful than mine has been.  I don’t say this lightly, nor am I bragging: my life has been far easier than it probably should have been.  You don’t need me to tell you about the importance or even the difficulty of calling on the Lord and struggling to abide in Him when the going gets rough.  Most of the problems and pains in my life have been self-inflicted: a little bowling alley here, a little stop sign there, but nowhere near what most of you have already gone through in slightly less than half the time.  You can probably say even better than I, a posteriori, along with David the next stanza: Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful.  The Lord preserves the simple; when I was brought low, He saved me.  The simplicity of David’s thoughts is so beautiful they almost hurt: here, too, are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron53.  But what David says next is almost shocking — we expect him to say, in our “work work work” mentality, in our culture that says “producing tangible, material goods is the only way to prove worth,” we expect David to say “get out there and do some good.  Get off your couch and start building bridges and purifying insalubrious water sources — do something to show how grateful you are to God for rescuing your life — go out there and ensure that rescuing wasn’t wasted.”  He says, rather, return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.  Be at peace, he says — get back to genuine leisure — be comforted once again that you are living a life you don’t deserve and enjoy it, delight in the things above, dwell in Love.  Return to your rest — that is why the Lord has saved us.  That’s why we can sleep while our beds are burning54 — we are commanded to return to rest, sing our song, wait and worship for Higher Love to fully return, because He is who He is and because He has dealt bountifully with us.

For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling; I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.  So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more55 — and yet God delivers us through them — you know that better than I.  So we walk and keep on walking with the Lord while we are still in the land of the living.  And we believe God is who He is, we believe God and what He has said even when we must acknowledge “I am greatly afflicted.”  All men are liars … no kidding.  Jesus made it Waterford® clear: in this life we will have trouble, we will be persecuted, we will be lied to, we will be defrauded, we will be cheated, we will be disappointed, we will be harassed, we will be intimidated — and that’s just from our friends.  We will agonize at sickness, at suffering, at loss, at death.  In this shadowy world of seeing and loving and living dimly, we will hurt, we will bend, we will break — but we are also to take heart, for Love has overcome it all.  Glancing ahead to verse 15, this is not something Jesus takes lightly: God does not shrug or yawn when those who stand up for Love51 are cut down in what to us is the prime of life.  He doesn’t because His Son stood up for Love and was cut down in what was seemingly the prime of His life.  I certainly don’t want to belittle or downgrade any of the loss, the scars, the wounds, the battles you have fought, but I do think it would be good for us to remember no matter how much pain we feel, how much hurt we experience, how much sorrow we endure, the worst thing that ever could possibly happen has already happened — and it didn’t happen to us.  The worst thing that could ever possibly happen would be if someone was perfect, sinless, blameless, who did nothing but heal and help and speak the truth in love and yet was somehow blamed, excoriated, tortured, and marred, who didn’t know sin let alone do it, to take sin upon Himself — not just one sin, not just the sins of one person, not just all the sins that had yet been committed up to that point, but every sin by every person, who ever did live, was living, had yet to live, all sins for all time, put upon Himself and become sin itself to take it all away.  That is Love.  The crucifixion of Jesus was the worst thing that could have ever happened.  We, in our utter, damnable self-centeredness think it was a great thing.  Oh happy day56, we say.  We call it Good Friday — how stupid a name is that?  Because God died and we don’t have to we say that is great — and it is, don’t get me wrong — I’m not ungrateful for life eternal; I just know we would do better remember the effects of this exemplar of Love are what are great — that Jesus rose from the dead, that He is alive, that sin is taken away, that Death has lost its sting — up from the grave He arose with a mighty triumph o’er His foe; He arose a victor from the dark domain, and He lives forever with His saints to reign.  He arose!  He arose!  Hallelujah!  Christ arose!57  That’s the happy day.  That is the “good” part.  The crucifixion itself is the worst thing that could have ever happened.  And that is why I am qualified to speak on Psalm 116: because I was there when they crucified my Lord.  I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword.  I threw the dice when they pierced His side. … But I have seen Love conquer the Great Divide58.  Amazing Love — how can it be — that Thou my God shouldst die for me!59

What could we possibly do to follow a love like that?  David wonders the same thing in verse 12, the great turning point of the psalm, and one of the great questions in the Bible.  What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits to me?  What can I give back to God60, who has given me this life and the life to come?  This Higher Love that must exist, that does exist, that could not be conquered by death because no one actually killed Him, He laid his equality with the Father down, He laid his life down, and He took them back up again — what can I give back to Him?  The answer is so obvious it is almost embarrassing.  We give back to God that which He has given to us: life and love.  I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord; I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all of His people.  If it means living a life of reflecting Higher Love to the point of a painful death, so be it — it’s not anything more than Jesus has already done for me.  We must recognize who we are (we always have to know that first, before we can know what we want and why we are here61): O Lord, says David, king over a nation of millions of people, I am your servant.  I am your servant, the son of your maidservant.  You have broken my bonds.  You have loosed my chains.  You have carried the cross of my shame.  You took the pain24.  (It’s worth saying again.)  What do I do in reply?  I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving and call on the name of the Lord.  I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all His people, in the courts of the house of the Lord, in your midst, O Jerusalem, wherever I go, whatever I do, whoever I’m with, I will praise the Lord!  As this Love takes us higher and higher9, Brother and Sister Christians, there is a price for flight62.  Thanksgiving is a sacrifice because it means subordinating the sinful desires we want to delight in for the better delights of serving and praising the Lord; it is a sacrifice because we are living sacrifices, our lives are continuous (not continual) lives of singing, worshipping, living, and loving back to God the life and love He has given us.  Brother Steve says it so well: I could light the night up with my soul on fire / I could make the sun shine from pure desire / Let me feel that love come over me / Let me feel how strong it could be / Bring me that Higher Love2.

So we live a life of love.  This is the hallmark of the Christian.  This is the life, the attitude, the direction back to which music so easily refocuses our life.  The two greatest commandments we have seen are to love the Lord with everything we have, will all that we are (which has come from God at the first), and to love each other as ourselves.  This is how all those lonely people63 who are image bearers of someone they haven’t met yet will know we are Christians and what it means to be a Christian — by our love for one another, said Jesus when He was exhorting us to take heart in this dark world that He has overcome.  Paul’s declaration love was greater than faith and hope in 1 Corinthians 13 is not so audacious after all.  The world does not know we are Christians because of our faith.  You can’t see faith (and the world is a superficial place, in case you haven’t noticed).  The world does not know we are Christians because of our hope.  Lots of people have hope.  Though optimists seem far outnumbered by pessimists, it isn’t hope in future restoration or glory or a better life to come that truly distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian.  They will know who we are, they will know Who is in us, they will know what we are for (preferably not what we are against, at least initially) by our love64 — by our manifestation of Higher Love, our love for each other, for ourselves, for God, and for them.  Bring me that Higher Love.

And when this Higher Love has been brought to us, by us getting back65, being reunited with this Higher Love (and it feels so good66) — what we that be like?  When we all get to Heaven, what a day of rejoicing that will be!  When we all see Jesus, we’ll sing and shout the victory!67  When faith becomes sight (oh Lord haste that day!68), when we stop seeing and living and loving in a mirror darkly and see and live and love face-to-face (not just face-to-face with Jesus but finally face-to-face with each other: we look at each other, wondering what the other is thinking, but we never say a thing69 — this will be replaced by the full, selfless, agape love we should have been loving each other with all this time).  Though, certainly, it is in our best interest, as we’ve said, while we can now, to take off our masks70 and fill each other up with light, Jesus, faith, spirit, joy, love, now71!  You got to live while you are alive.  But how will it be when we are there, when we get back to where we once belonged65 … party? karamu? fiesta? forever?72  All of that and more, for the Higher Love as it (He) continues to conform us to Himself will transform our existence into73 … the high life!

You know, it used to seem to me that my life ran on too fast, and I had to take it slowly just to make the good parts last.  But when you’re born to run it’s so hard to just slow down, so don’t be surprised to see me back in that bright part of town73.  When the Higher Love rescues us and returns us Back in the High Life Again what will that look like you ask?  We’ll have ourselves a time and we’ll dance ’til the morning sun, and we’ll let the good times come in and we won’t stop ’til we’re done73.  And considering when we’ve been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun, we’ll have no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’ve first begun74 … I don’t think the good times will stop coming in nor will we stop dancing and singing and living and loving for … well … ever.  We’ll be back in the high life again.  All the doors I closed one time (and I’ve closed more than my share) will open up again.  We’ll be back in the high life again.  All the eyes that watched us once (that great cloud of witnesses) will smile and take us in.  And we’ll drink and dance with one hand free and have the world so easily.  You know we’ll be a sight to see back in the high life again73.

In the meantime, while there is time, let’s go out and feel everything.  We must live while we can and drink our cup of laughter.  The finer things keep shining through, the way my soul gets lost in you.  The finer things I feel in me, the golden dance life could be.  Keep shining.  We go so fast, why don’t we make it last.  Life is glowing inside you and me.  Come out and dance with me75.  Come see that Higher Love is alive and well and lifting us higher and higher9 and while we sing our song, dance our dance, live our lives, and love this Higher Love to everyone and especially Him Who first gave it to us, we know soon and very soon76 this Higher Love will return for us and take us back to the high life again73.

Prayer

Lord, you have heard our voice and we love you.  We do not want to overrule your patience but come back for us soon, please.  You have delivered us from death — help us to return to our rest.  As we sing our songs and dance our dances, as we live the lives You have bountifully given us to live, help us Lord love one another, love ourselves, love You with a Higher Love.  And we patiently yet yearningly wait that day when you will rescue us fully, so we can think fully, see fully, talk fully, worship fully, love fully — each other and you, face-to-face forevermore  Oh, I want to be there in Your eyes11.  When the finer things will shine through forever, as our souls get lost in you75 forever, as we come to know and worship and love you increasingly more accurately forever, when we will be back in the high life again, we’ll have ourselves a time, and we’ll dance ’til the morning sun73 (which will never set, truly, on your empire77) and we’ll let the good times come in, and we won’t stop ’til we’re done, when we will drink and dance with one hand free, and have the world so easily, you know we will be a sight to see, back in the high life again thanks to your Higher Love73.  Lord, bring us this Higher Love2.  Amen and amen.

Works Referenced

N.B.: The artist listed is the version in mind when this message was written.

  1. “I Wanna Take You Higher,” Sly & the Family Stone
  2. “Higher Love,” Steve Winwood
  3. See (hear) 2
  4. “Both Sides of the Story,” Phil Collins
  5. See ch. “Hope” in Book 3, Christian Behaviour of Mere Christianity
  6. “Purple Haze,” Jimi Hendrix
  7. “Have I Told You Lately,” Rod Stewart
  8. “Down In My Heart,” Kids Praise!
  9. “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” Jackie Wilson
  10. “High Enough,” Damn Yankees
  11. “In Your Eyes,” Peter Gabriel
  12. “The Pass,” Rush
  13. “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” Meat Loaf
  14. “Outside the Wall,” Pink Floyd
  15. “True Colors,” Phil Collins
  16. “She Talks to Angels,” The Black Crowes
  17. Idea of a University, Cardinal John Henry Newman, esp. Discourse V, “Knowledge its Own End”
  18. “Silent Lucidity,” Queensrÿche
  19. “Stand By Me,” Ben E. King
  20. “The Mountains Win Again,” Blues Traveler
  21. “With or Without You,” U2
  22. E.g., Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision
  23. “Jesus is Love,” The Commodores
  24. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” U2 (lyrics taken from concert performances, especially Vertigo 05: Live from Milan)
  25. “Love Rescue Me,” U2
  26. “Sunshine of Your Love,” Cream
  27. “Somebody to Love,” Queen
  28. “Under Pressure,” Queen
  29. “1979,” Smashing Pumpkins
  30. “Sparkle,” Līve (emphasis added)
  31. Hamlet, III.i.75, William Shakespeare
  32. “Reunion,” Collective Soul
  33. “Where the Streets Have No Name,” U2
  34. “Walk On,” U2
  35. “A Sort of Homecoming (Danny Lanois Remix),” U2
  36. “Divided We Stand,” M*A*S*H
  37. Dune, Frank Herbert
  38. “Devils & Dust,” Bruce Springsteen
  39. “Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day,” Jethro Tull (cf. “The Thin Ice,” Pink Floyd)
  40. “Faith,” George Michael
  41. “Take Me Home,” Phil Collins
  42. “It.,” Genesis
  43. “I Know You’re Out There Somewhere,” The Moody Blues
  44. “Wish You Were Here,” Pink Floyd
  45. “Right Here, Right Now,” Jesus Jones (cf. “Right Now,” Van Halen)
  46. “Love is All Around,” Paul Williams (theme song to The Mary Tyler Moore Show)
  47. “Patience,” Guns N’ Roses
  48. “40,” U2
  49. “Supper’s Ready,” Genesis
  50. “Love is a Battlefield,” Pat Benatar
  51. “They Stood Up for Love,” Līve
  52. “I Want to Know What Love Is,” Foreigner
  53. C.S. Lewis’s remarks about The Lord of the Rings
  54. “Beds Are Burning,” Midnight Oil
  55. “Tears, Idle Tears,” Alfred, Lord Tennyson
  56. “Happy Day,” Tim Hughes
  57. “Christ Arose,” Robert Lowry
  58. “When Love Comes to Town,” U2
  59. “And Can It Be That I Should Gain,” Charles Wesley
  60. Cf. transition between “Bad” and “Where the Streets Have No Name,” U2 from the Elevation 2001: Live from Boston DVD
  61. Cf. Babylon 5
  62. “Sister Christian,” Night Ranger
  63. “Eleanor Rigby,” The Beatles
  64. “They’ll Know We are Christians by Our Love,” Peter Scholtes (sometimes called “We Are One in the Spirit”)
  65. “Get Back,” The Beatles
  66. “Reunited,” Peaches & Herb
  67. “When We All Get to Heaven,” Eliza E. Hewitt
  68. “It Is Well with My Soul,” Horatio Spafford
  69. “Ants Marching,” Dave Matthews Band
  70. “Ghost Story,” Sting
  71. “Fill Her Up,” Sting
  72. “All Night Long (All Night),” Lionel Richie
  73. “Back in the High Life Again,” Steve Winwood
  74. “Amazing Grace,” John Newton (this verse attributed to Harriet Beecher Stowe)
  75. “The Finer Things,” Steve Winwood (cf., “Soul Singing,” The Black Crowes)
  76. “Soon and Very Soon,” Andrae Crouch
  77. Saying attributed to various world empires over the centuries, notably Xerxes’ Persian Empire, Charles V’s Holy Roman Empire, and Queen Victoria’s British Empire

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