Post from July 4, 2023

“👟 RSD 1162 ✅ Today’s verse: “Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.” — Romans 12:16

On the Bible Gateway website (which has a bunch of translations on it), there was a footnote on the “people of low position” part. The footnote reads, “Or willing to do menial work.” We’ll touch on that later.

How do you vibe with 90s music? Do you like it? I don’t just mean the birth of Grunge or the surge rap had during that time, and I don’t just mean the resurgence of boy bands. The 90s had these unique genres illuminate the decade, and I love all of it, but the vibe I’m talking about is the 90s pop music you’d find sitting on your bedroom floor, flipping through magazines, or if you’re an ‘88 baby like me, playing with your toys on the floor of your big sister’s room while she’s trying to bootleg the perfect playlist via a mixtape cornucopia of radio recordings. Do you know how many times I called into the station requesting whatever song she needed because I was “a little kid, and they’d play it faster”? I have a special place in my heart for the many 90s one-hit/two-hit wonders and the uniqueness of the lyrics and sound that the 94.1 pop music station carried. If my big sister or big brother were playing it in their rooms or begging Mom to play it in the car or the “big girls” at dance had it playing on their boom boxes in between classes or at lock-ins, I vibed with it. They just had an essence to them, and, to me, a lot of those songs just sound like summer. Or, maybe they just sound like childhood, and not the “Barney & Friends” part of childhood. The part of childhood where you were so excited about getting older because you were getting a glimpse of the good part of getting older from chilling with the big kids. Maybe that’s why I still prefer radio in the car over a premade playlist on my iPhone: it’s the idea that I’m sharing that song in that moment with other people. What a vibe, huh? There’s this FB music appreciation group I’m in (Everybody Needs Jams for the Day) where somebody made a post about “what’s the best line in a song” without the line being in the bridge or the chorus. I ended up choosing something from Bob Dylan (I mean, why not, right?), but before consulting Mr. Dylan, I was flipping through my 90s catalog to see if I could isolate only one line (they’ve got a lot of great ones where you need two).

Here are some contenders. “Violence is spread worldwide, and there’s families on the street/We sell drugs to children now, oh why can’t we just see?/That all we do is eliminate our future with the things we do today?/Money is our incentive now so that makes it okay.” That’s from Blessid Union of Souls. Hits hard, doesn’t it? “I told her, ‘I ain’t so sure about this place/It’s hard to play a gig in this town and keep a straight face.’” That’s Shawn Mullins’s “Lullaby.” It’s sweet, but not too sugary: give it a listen. “He asks a man for what he could spare with shame in his eyes/‘Get a job you…slob,’ is all he replies/God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes/‘Cause then you really might know what it’s like to sing the blues.” That’s from Everlast. Here’s the last one, I promise. “If God had a name what would it be?/And would you call it to his face?” That’s from “One of Us” by Joan Osbourne. Now, to break the rules of the group post, here’s part of the Joan Osbourne song (the chorus) that got me to thinking about today’s verse. Have you ever heard the course of this song? “What if God was one of us?/Just a slob like one of us?/Just a stranger on the bus/Tryin’ to make his way home?” If you’re thinking, “God’s not some guy eating chips on the bus,” well, you’d be right. But, what I’ve always liked about this song (well; once I was old enough to think of it) is that, if the premise is that God could be found in any person you encounter, shouldn’t that affect how we see people? Mother Teresa (St. Teresa of Calcutta) said, “I see Jesus in every human being,” and she kept that in mind and heart while she was serving because, in serving others, she was serving God. So, I’m just saying: that “stranger on the bus” thing isn’t sounding so dumb now, is it? It’s not that this person is God in disguise (I mean—I guess you never know); it’s that this is a person who was handcrafted by God, and just as He’s watching you, He’s watching them as well. It’s that their soul deserves to be seen just as much as yours does, and it is.

So, about today’s verse. The ESV translation has that last line as, “Never be wise in your own sight.” The Message translation reads with a more familiar vibe. “Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.” Plain. English. God wants us all to get along. I know—not surprising, right? But, I don’t think it’s as much the obvious “don’t fight” as it is sharing peace with each other. “Share tears,” and share laughter. Share. From Google/Oxford, share means to “have a portion of (something) with another or others.” You don’t get your piece of the world all to yourself and they get theirs (I mean, we’re not five years old—not in our Barney era any longer). We all have to share the world and the time we have on it; we only have it WITH others (sorry, no italics option). Share time? Well, that random guy on the bus is passing the same half hour as you are. It’s doesn’t belong to either one of you solely because it belongs to both of you. Like it or not, you’re experiencing that half hour together. If we boil everything down to that, what place do things like social class or economic status really have? “Money is our incentive now, so that makes it ok”—think about the first part of that lyric. Money doesn’t make anything that’s not ok suddenly ok. In the same respect, the beggar from the Everlast song? Money and status, or lack thereof. Yeah, we don’t always have change to spare, but in that ten seconds we’re sharing with him, we can be kind. Wish him luck. Wish him well. Being conceited or “wise in your own sight” isn’t a good look. “God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes, cause then you really might know what it’s like to sing the blues.”

Today’s verse advises us against perceived importance in warm and positive way. We shouldn’t be placing ourselves above others because that isn’t the way God sees us. Sure, not everyone’s going to win an Oscar or become President, but God’s purpose for everyone is important to Him, so it should be important to us. Everyone has a place. God knows how many people He put into the world, and He made each person exactly right for their journey and the good that journey will do as part of other journeys. “Live in harmony with one another.” Share harmony. You know, harmony: “the quality of forming a pleasing and consistent whole.” (Google/Oxford). Whole. We’re not just sharing parts, we’re sharing the whole of what life has to offer. “Live in harmony with one another” means we should “[form] a pleasing and consistent whole” with our fellow travelers on this planet. After all, we together are the church body. “Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” — 1 Corinthians 12:27.

“Do not be proud.” The part in the footnote about being “willing to do menial work” reminds us that we can only lead by serving and that serving isn’t beneath any of us: it’s our calling. Serving each other alongside each other is that calling we all share. The part about your enemies? Yes, there is such thing as evil, but most people just mess up. Maybe they’re willing to fix it, and maybe not. Maybe they’re not “there” yet. Maybe you’ve had moments when you weren’t at your most awesome, and did you always go back and fix it? Part of sharing peace means not holding onto anger; give people a break where you can—you know somebody somewhere has done it for you. For the people who seem continually against you (you know, mean people?), pay them no mind and keep to your own life. Say some prayers for them (you can still share mercy), but don’t worry about them in opposition to you (share peace). “If God is for us, who can be against us?” — Romans 8:31. And, with our friends and loved ones: the ones God put into your life so that you could experience the richness of humanity: share peace with them as well. Share your patience. Share goodness, share faith, share gentleness, share love, share the harmony that balances the busy melodies of life. With these who are most dear: share in their feelings and experiences, the good and bad. Be alongside them. Be excited with them in their best times and offer your hand in friendship when they need it most in their hard times. Share. We’re all sharing our time here with everyone else whether we realize it or not. Sometimes we’re all listening to that same song on the radio. Sometimes we’re laughing at the same joke on television or cheering at the same game. Sometimes we’re stuck in the same traffic. Keeping that in mind might help us to see people as we should. We share this time and this journey with one another. After all, aren’t we all just “tryin’ to make [our] way home?”

Today’s photo was the moon looking awesome when I was leaving my parents’ house. “And even though I know how very far apart we are/It helps to think we might be wishin’ on the same bright star/And when the night wind starts to sing a lonesome lullaby/It helps to think we’re sleeping underneath the same big sky” — “Somewhere Out There” (Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram)…from the 80s movie soundtrack from “An American Tail.””