Double Dipping

So this is me double dipping on my posts. I know I just posted one like two minutes ago that was all in love and adoration of John Mayer. And he is a fantastic musician. But, for whatever reason, I got listening to some MoTab, as I am wont to do sometimes. Plus, today I listened to "My Joy is Full" while cooking spaghetti for dinner. I'll post both of those videos down below so you can listen to them.

It's just phenomenal to me how music, written and performed in praise and worship of Christ, is so... superior. Really, it is. I mean, it's fun to listen to upbeat songs, and there are satisfying melodies and lyrics and things that we can relate our mortal experience to. All these things are enjoyable. Certainly it often seems as though nothing is missing. Maybe that's because some music doesn't allow the Spirit to be present, and maybe it's just because sometimes we're so caught up in the present that we forget the glorious eternity that surrounds us. Maybe it's a little bit of both. But, even if we don't recognize what's missing, there IS something missing. There's a feeling that you get listening to songs that praise and worship Christ that is so unbelievable. For me, when I listen to these two songs in particular, it's like actually touching eternity. As if it were some vast river of crystal clear water, swirling around us, something you could actually dip your fingers in. Something I'd like to immerse my whole self in, and just be saturated with.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to listen to Church music all of the time? I mean, yeah some of it is boring and some of it is just ... cheesy (EFY CDs, Janice Kapp Perry, anyone?). But songs like the ones I'm about to post have to be on the Celestial Soundtrack. Honestly, they both bring me to tears just listening to them. Especially "My Joy is Full," and that one doesn't even have lyrics, except for "alleluia." Though, now that I google'd the defined meaning of that word, it's the Greek spelling of the Hebrew word which means "Praise ye Jehovah." I guess there aren't any words that are more fitting, any lyrics more worthy. What else is there to say? I mean really, in our whole lives, what more is there to say? (Listen to all of this, coming out of the cyber-mouth of an English major who's hoping to be a writer some day... It makes all of my so-called "hopes and dreams" sound so frivolous and temporary.)

I decided to be a nerd and look up some music-y quotes. I found a great one from President J. Reuben Clark Jr., who said, "We get nearer to the Lord through music than perhaps through any other thing except prayer." I certainly have a testimony of that, one that is reinforced every time I listen to songs like these. If music this heavenly can be brought to us (because it is unquestionably inspired), just imagine how unbelievably glorious music that's actually in heaven will be. I almost think that the whole air will be full of beautiful music and will smell sweeter than anything we can imagine, and the whole place will be covered in colors that are beyond our comprehension ... How could someone not want to be there? Oh gosh, I wish my thoughts could always be this uplifted, always this focused on what's beyond. I wish my life didn't require so much attention, wasn't full of so much distraction. But I suppose that's just how it is. Learning to cope with it, handle it, love it. How else could we even hope to deserve a glimpse of all that beauty before us unless we had experienced its opposite? How could we understand and appreciate it fully unless we knew what a lack of beauty, of glory, looked and felt like? And now that makes me want to say that I want to be exposed to as much of that opposite as possible so I can soak up as much of the wonder in the future. But that's practically asking for suffering ... and I guess I AM almost saying that. I don't think I will, lest I want to knock on wood immediately following. Anyways. Enough of my ramblings. Here are the videos. Enjoy! :)

This is the Christ

My Joy is Full