That tuba's my Barney
It isn't just 1 Peter 4:8 that says love covers a multitude of sins; life itself drums it into us. Two poet songwriters, Robert Wright and George Forrest, make the point when they have a lover describe his beloved like this.Dawn's promising skies
Petals on a pool drifting
Imagine these in one pair of eyes
And this is my beloved
Strange spice from the south
Honey through the comb sifting
Imagine these in one eager mouth
And this is my beloved
And when she speaks and when she talks to me
Music! Mystery!
And when she moves and when she walks with me
Paradise comes suddenly near
All that can stir All that can stun
All that's for the heart's lifting
Imagine these in one perfect one
And this is my beloved.
What's amazing is that lovers can say that of their beloved even when the lover knows
his beloved isn't a perfect physical specimen. What others call
"defects" the lover takes to be "the bits" that make the beloved unique
and especially interesting—rather than "plastic". And the feelings
generated by the beloved's nearness, or the very thought of her, are as
the poets describe above. Well, all right, the younger face of romance
or the passionate sexual element might lessen with the years but the
beloved remains the beloved and other wonders in the beloved become more
prominent and more magical.
Where the relationship is more than sheerly animal the
description isn't based on the "hard physical facts"—it's based partly
on the history the two have shared and the devotion that has developed.
The "hard facts" aren't allowed to be supreme.
You see the same thing in that terrific movie The Music Man
when (right at the end) the converted swindler is about to be tarred
and feathered by the people he hurt, because "the hard facts" were that
Professor Harold Hill hadn't taught the kids in the band to play well.
In the face of "the facts" he deserved to be tarred and feathered; but
as the children played (terribly!) one adoring parent jumped up and
shouted with lyrical pride, "That tuba's my Barney."
Other parents followed as their kids "puffed and blowed"
their hearts out in awful tones. Parental love covered a multitude of
musical sins.
I know why the older brother in Luke 15 spoke as he did
and why his father took the opposite tack with the prodigal boy and it
had nothing to do with "the facts"!
I know intelligent, holy and righteous people who've
looked at my many and serious failures in life down the years and still
speak well of me and I know why they do it. I know I'm not worthy of it (only God knows that better than I) but it isn't about me—it's about them; they have set their love on me and love covers a multitude of sins.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.