Tag Archives: stand by you

Sentimental Saturdays and Message Mondays (How Fast do we Consume Music?)

Gone are the days when you can appreciate music for what it really is- a song to be savoured, a song to be listened to again and again, with every listen a new meaning is imparted to whomever listens. With the advent of Spotify, youtube, iTunes, Amazon, Pandora and every other musical service at your fingertips, skipping songs seems to be the norm nowadays. Listening to a song to death, until another track comes along, seems to be all the rage, when in fact sometimes we are called to just sit and mull over a song more than usual. Often, we may be so hasty to move onto the next new song, that we may skip over things that God may even want to say to us. We may be in fact rushing so fast from one thing to the next (music is a clear example) that we may miss what God may have in store entirely. Which is why this new post for Sentimental Saturdays is about lament, lamenting that how we have listened to music in the past (really listening to the tracks, because without the ease of access of music, we are forced to focus on what the lyrics really mean for us as people) is sadly how listeners of music don’t listen to music now. We live in a now-centred (and me-centred) society, that any hint of anything taking longer than expected is shafted, for the new, quick and convenient.

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Message Mondays (Stand By You)

Can a song released in the mainstream music market have just as much passion, heart, emotion, and maybe even a spiritual significance to those hearing it, as a song released solely in the CCM industry? Can a song like “I Can Only Imagine” (MercyMe) or “Cry Out to Jesus” (Third Day) be as impactful compared to songs like “Temporary Home” (Carrie Underwood), “Superman” (Chris Daughtry), “Love” (Jana Kramer) or even the more recent 2015 hit song “Fight Song” (Rachel Platten)? This is a quandary and a conundrum in and of itself. Sure there are some songs that are explicit in language and in what they express to the listener, and there are others that are just plain silly in a fun way, and then there are others the evoke emotions of hope, encouragement and empowerment, but have you ever stopped to wonder, that God inhabits these songs as much as he does when we hear the songs we know and love on our favourite Christian radio stations?

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