What a Higher Love and 80’s music have in common

It’s Friday and that means it’s Five Minute Friday where Lisa-Jo gives a word and write about it for 5 minutes…whatever the first thoughts come to mind after reading that word.  Today’s word is “LONELY”

GO!

I’m given the word “lonely” and what’s the first thought that comes to mind? 

“Just a small town girl, Living in a lonely world…”  what 80’s song or band is that line from?

It makes me think of the songs I grew up listening to - and making up dance routines with my friends to…the 80’s pop music on the radio or cassette tapes I heard from my boom box.  For those who know me, I’m a 70s and early 80s Michael Jackson songs fan (I must confess) and my husband even threw a surprise 80's birthday party for me last year – with MJ songs to dance to, of course.

But one of my all time favorite 80’s songs is Higher Love by Steve Winwood.

“Worlds are turning and we're just hanging on
Facing our fear and standing out there alone
A yearning, and it's real to 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 be
Bring me a higher love
Bring me a higher love
Bring me a higher love
Where's that higher love I keep thinking of?

…Let me feel that love come over me”

And back then I was a teenager. There was a longing in my heart for that Higher Love, but I either didn’t realize that’s what I was longing for or I kept ignoring the gift of that true love that was in my lap.  I wouldn’t open it.  I just danced to the music and sang the songs like the rest of the world but there was a feeling of something more.  A feeling of a hole that needed to be filled.  But I was choosing to fill it with other things. There was something so close yet with my stubbornness, immaturity and conformity (or peer pressure), I chose not to pursue the true Love until I was in my 20s in the 90s.

Yes, we are still living in a lonely world where majority of the people do not know Jesus or if they hear about Him choose not to believe.  Choose to conform with today’s culture.  Choose to live life for self gain.  Choose not to receive and open the gift of joy and peace that only God can give.

Even in the midst of those 80’s pop songs written with a worldly view, there were still some that made the top charts with words expressing a longing for something better, something deeper, something to fill a void in the restless hearts. 

There have been what has felt like lonely days in my life, but oh how grateful I am that God has never left me alone.  I might not have felt it at the time but He never left my side, holding out His hand to give me that ‘Higher Love’...Himself.  The One Love that lifts you high above loneliness, guilt, and pain.  

STOP! TIMES UP!

 

OK…for fun!  Do you have a favorite 80’s song or band?  I’d love for you to share (or admit to it) in my comments!