Today's Scripture Reading (October
20, 2025): Psalm 120 & 121
In 1980,
Johnny Lee released "Lookin' for Love" as part of the soundtrack for
the movie Urban Cowboy. The connection the song had with the movie's audience
made it one of Johnny Lee's biggest hits. The lyrics just seemed to hit home
with us.
I was lookin' for love in all the
wrong places.
Lookin' for love in too many faces
Searchin' their eyes
Lookin' for traces
Of what I'm dreamin' of
Hoping to find a friend and a lover
I'll bless the day I discover
Another heart lookin' for love (Wanda Mallette,
Bob Morrison, Patti Ryan).
We seem to understand this concept of looking for love.
Johnny Lee says he is often asked where the song came from, and he answers that
he found it in a box in a hotel room. Maybe not what you are thinking. Lee was
releasing his latest album and needed three more songs. People would send in
cassette tapes with their tracks, hoping that one of them might be chosen for
an upcoming album. On the day in question, Lee arrived at his hotel room and found
it full of boxes containing hopeful songs for Lee to go through. In one of
those boxes, Lee discovered "Lookin' for Love."
Maybe it was just luck, but it was early on in the process
that Lee hit on "Lookin' for Love." The song was written by a couple
of teachers who had never had a song published before, and the inspiration for
the lyrics was their grade two classroom. The addition of that thought alone
adds a different dimension to the song.
Johnny Lee said he couldn't believe that he hadn't written
the lyrics, because it was a description of his life. Maybe that is who we
really are, a group of elementary school students trying to find the place
where we belong.
I think "Lookin'
for Love" also describes the biblical story of the Garden of Eden. The
reality is that the Garden was the place built just for us; it was the place
where we belonged. And yet, even though we had found love and found a place of
belonging, we rebelled. The interaction between the serpent and Adam and Eve
really goes back to our lack of confidence in ourselves. It wasn't that we were
not loved, but we were convinced that we were not loved. It wasn't that we didn't
belong, but that we were convinced we didn't.
It is
something that I see in the church all the time. People feel that they aren't
loved and don't belong. And they are positive that this lack of love is the
truth, when the reality is the opposite. Actions are taken out of context.
Comments are viewed through a lens that reveals a different meaning. And none
of it is true.
But we
believe this lack of love is the truth, so we walk away. And the question that
remains is this: when you walk away from community, love, and belonging, what
comes next? I mean, after God went to the trouble of creating the Garden for us
and we walked away, why would God care about what happened to us?
And here the
deception continues. The message is that God doesn't care. You walked away from
him, and so he walked away from you. When everything goes wrong, don't bother
looking to God. He already gave us a chance at life, and we rejected it. We must
be on our own.
But the
Psalmist says something different.
1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
Psalm
121:1-2
We
may have rejected God, but he has not rejected us. We might not believe in God,
but God still believes in us. What do we do when life falls apart? We
recognized that God is still there for us, and so we lift up our eyes to the
mountains
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading:
Psalm 126
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