Jim had just played Patsy Cline’s song “Crazy” for maybe the fourth time in a row. It was a rainy day so I was on San Fernando Road drinking at the No Name bar. As the song played thru I ordered another whiskey and coke. My mind must have drifted because when it came around a new song had been playing:
“….I’ve built walls, A fortress deep and mighty, That none may penetrate, I have no need of friendship, friendship causes pain, and it’s laughter and its loving I disdain, I am a rock, I am an island…”
As the old familiar song played on, I didn’t hear much more of the lyrics, I didn’t need to, knew them by heart. I just drank my drink more deeply as I fortified the walls that I had built around myself. Even as I did not acknowledge it, I had become Paul Simon’s man from the classic “I am a Rock”.
Yes, I was in a place where I had been married twice and divorced. Completely alienated from my son and most of my family. And even though I was in a relationship with my soon to be third wife, I could not honestly say it was love. I am a rock.
What I could say was that I was only truly content when I was sitting alone on a bar stool drinking. I did not come to the bar to socialize or to be with friends. And even though I was at the bar that very day with my crew. I had no need to be with them. I am an island.
As I sit here today typing this that day screams the “aloneness” that was me before I was met by the Savior. It certainly wasn’t my first and most certainly not the last. But everything that I was on that day is what I was saved from. What happened?
The change was the result of love. No not the love so disdained in this song or so glorified in others. The human versions that I tried on like they were suits. Some too loose fitting and others to tight. None of them seemed to fit just right. And the reason all of them were wrong in some way was, you could say, the material.
You see, I found out without God’s love there is no human love. John, the evangelist, states it simply in 1 John 4:7-8 “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” There it is. We cannot know love unless we know God. And Jesus tells us we cannot know God unless we know Him. It is His love is that was the missing “material”.
I believe this now and know it to be true. But maybe you say, “How do you know God is love and if so how does that change anything?” To me and I pray to you also, that answer is found once again in God’s Word: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
That means He loved me even as I sat on that bar stool, disdaining Him and everything around me. He loved me so much that He willingly “..shows His love for us that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom 5:8). Yeah me that sinner sitting alone, He had died for that guy. Can you believe it? Well I did and once I did how could I ever again be a rock or an island in the face of that kind of love? A God that was willing to die because he wanted to spend eternity with someone like me, it changed me!
I tell you, I wear that love now and it fits like a glove. His love has become my love and I am sorry Paul Simon, I can’t disdain it, I can now only embrace it.
I am not a rock, because He is my Rock. I am not an island, I am never alone because: “God is with you- Wherever you may go and no matter what life brings.” (Joshua 1:9).
Thank You Lord!
John
5/3/2017