FredMcKinnon.Com

Above All has always bothered me as well. I love so many of the lyrics, but it ends with the focus on “me”, and that ruins it for me. I’ve thought of changing the lyrics to say “You took the fall, and were glorified above all.” We spend so much time thinking of ourselves anyway. We don’t need the lyrics of a song to help us in that direction, especially not when it’s a song we’re supposed to be singing to worship Jesus.

Ah the worship leader’s nightmare…how to label and categorize a song, where to put it in a set: Is worship always intimate?
I’ve chosen those group cheerleeder songs to bring the congregation to the bibilical act of assembly, and to build each other up in the faith as we get ready to “enter into worship”. When the blended worship services first began taking root in the US, we were pulling people out of their seats when they were used to be either non-participatory, or introverted, or thought of such songs as sacreligious…some even worse. Those songs have actually split congregations. As a worship leader matures into her (or his) place of leading a congregation to the throne, it’s very important that they know the way there themself. If, along the way, there are stones that may cause her brother or sister to stumble, then when she returns from the throne to lead people into the throneroom, or down the path, she might have had the forsight to move a few of the big ones out of the way, replacing them with familiar forest duff here and there.
..by the way, i see an old comment of mine up there. am i even answering a current blog note? lol

I know many people who find “How He Loves” lyrically abrasive, more often than not because of the “sloppy wet kiss” lyric (found in the original JMM version).

Personally the lyric really struck a chord with me, I’ll start by saying that. I don’t like the automatic nixing of a worship song because it uses analogies based on physical intimacy. Honestly, if the Church is the Bride of Christ is He not allowed to proverbially kiss us? Remove ourselves from the metaphor, and think about the connotations that lyric might have with people, and I see why some people might choose not to sing it.

It’s very graphic, “sloppy wet kiss,” and I haven’t met anyone who says those words don’t make them think of SOMETHING.
I like to think John Mark and I are on the same page with this one, because when I hear the lyric I’m instantly sent back to my childhood. I think everybody has an aunt who maybe they would only see at Thanksgiving or Christmas, but the moment she arrived brought with her an onslaught of uncomfortably tight hugs, a shower of sloppy wet kisses, and an outpouring of love that at the time we were too young, naive, and possibly grossed out, to understand its strength, meaning, or significance. And I find it so funny how it seems that as soon as we’ve grown into understanding those emotions, we’ve grown out of those exchanges, and proceed to spend the rest of our lives looking for even ONE person with the heart to love us that shamelessly.

So every time I sing that verse, I can’t help but be reminded that to me, God is what that aunt never could be: Infallible. Omnitient. My Savior. He loved me when I didn’t want it, before I even knew what it meant, and He’s never stopped. He shows me love even when I look for it in an unloving world. Not just on Christmas; not just on thanksgiving.

Unfortunately for some people, those words make them think of things like their first kiss, or someone they dated in middle school, or trying to get lucky on prom night; things they might not want to think about while worshipping (or remember at all). So with that said, I completely understand the logic that even if that’s only the case for two people in the congregation, that kind of darkness has no business before the throne of Christ, and that could be reason enough to scratch the song.

As for the metaphors, I agree, some of them seem a bit contrived, but you have to remember he wrote this about his own life, after a pastor friend of his died tragically in a car accident. It was never intended to be a worship anthem, it was just a form of closure to honor the legacy of his friend (who the night he passed said to JMM that he’d be willing to give up his life to see Christ’s love shake the youth of a nation).

Out of fairness though, I think you’re taking many the metaphors out of context. The lyric isn’t “Love’s like a hurricane, destroying houses and causing millions of dollars in property damage,” it’s “Love’s like a hurricane, I am a tree; bending beneath the weight of his wind and mercy.” You can snip out the word hurricane and call it synonymous with destruction, but I think a more accurate interpretation the whole passage describes God’s love as “sudden,” “overwhelming,” and “unrelenting,” kind of like… a hurricane.

The lyric isn’t “All of a sudden I am unaware, where the heck am I? seriously, where are my keys?” it’s “All of a sudden I am unaware of these afflictions, eclipsed by glory.” Didn’t Christ die for that? To pay for the guilt and the shame of the sins and darkness we experience in this world; the debt we no longer have to settle? When we decide to be really honest with ourselves before God, faced with the perspective of comparing our suffering to His greatness, our pain/guilt/afflictions have a way of vanishing. Not because they don’t exist, but because we’re forced to either choose to hang on to our pain and deny ourselves forgiveness, or to throw the baggage to the ground and run in His freedom. Given that decision, who has time to waste their lives hanging on to the weight of their guilt? God sure didn’t intend for us to do that. That’s where you get “I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way He loves…”

As far as the grace/ocean metaphor, it’s still lost on me too. Grace is not something we’re naturally, involuntarily pulled into, like sinking into an ocean, which takes no effort at all. I guess you could look at it as being consumed against one’s will, but like you say it seems a bit farfetched.