Singing the blues with Mr. Kanye West-part 2 (Anthony)

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 5:07 pm by Guest Contributor

Singing the blues with Mr. Kanye West-part 2 (Anthony) 2015-03-13T17:07:38-05:00 Guest Contributor

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To be intoxicated with God’s love and justice is to be on a love lockdown

Love seeks one thing only: the good of the one loved. It leaves all the other secondary effects to take care of themselves. Love, therefore, is its own reward.

– Thomas Merton

I’m not lovin you
Way I wanted to
What I had to do
Had to run from you
I’m in love with you
But the vibe is wrong
And that haunted me
All the way home

– song Love Lockdown from the album 808 and Heartbreaks

Mr. West is describing a love he possesses for his beloved but is unable to express it or give it the way he wants to. It is a gift of love that is at once present and un-givable. The vibe was wrong. The timing was off. As an amateur in love I am always baffled by the timing thing in the art of love. But what if the timing is right, the vibe right, and the door to give the gift of love was wide open? A love lockdown. A love that pours out to the beloved from a fount or source that knows no limits. To have a love flow through you onto others and the world that permeates and sustains the very fabric of the cosmos. This is the love of God.

An apostle once said:

And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

As I look back over this past year and look forward to a new year I’m reminded of a past love lockdown that almost caused me to lose my very soul. With that love lockdown I almost lost all hope and the ability to love again. But I learned that what I thought was love for that beloved was something that was not true love. True love doesn’t desire the beloved to return love in compulsion. This is the love of God. God gifts us with that love God wants to be returned. I delight in God because God first loved me and has poured out love into my broken heart.

This hope and love never disappoint. This is a love lockdown whose key, door, and house are provided by a non-contingent source. A source that doesn’t act out of necessity but out of pure desire for the beloved. Such a love sustains during the coldest winter seasons of our lives. Seasons of loss, betrayal, brokeness, and lament.

My prayer for you this new year is that you find your heart on a love lockdown that knows no limits. That your soul would be captured by a love for God and others that would find great delight and enjoyment in God’s abiding presence.

Anthony Smith lives in Concord, NC, and he is a core member of the Charlotte Emergent cohort.

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