Self-Appraisal

            Larry King has written in his latest book about a great American composer who wrote a song—and disliked it so much, he placed it in a drawer and kept it there for twenty years.

            One day during the 1930s, the famous radio singer, Kate Smith, called the composer. She was set to perform at a big show on July 4.

            She asked her friend if he had a song for her.

            He replied, “I wrote something a long time ago, but it’s no good—too sentimental.”

            “Let me see it,” she said.

            “I don’t like it,” came his rejoinder.

            “Let me see it,” she cajoled him.

            At last, he did.

            The composer was Irving Berlin. The song was GOD BLESS AMERICA.

            Sometimes, we are not the best judges of our own work.

What Is The Name of that Song?

Ever heard a song that you recognized, liked, and wanted to find the name of it? NFL Films played a piece to open its highlight film of the New York Giants’ 1990 season. It was a beautiful, compelling, and inspirational piece of music.

The work lay dormant in my mind until recently, when I heard it on a JOS A BANK commercial. “Wow! I’ve got to find that and download it to my iTunes library,” I thought to myself. And so the search began.

The search is not over. I looked for the music on iTunes. I hunted for it on Amazon. I rummaged around the back channels of YOUTUBE. I even deployed the song identification apps from my iPhone in the effort to find this piece of music.

Why do I go to this trouble? Because that work of music touches something deep within me. Is it an emotion? Yes, but I think it goes deeper than that.

C. S. Lewis wrote that we possess a longing that haunts us. It senses another world that awaits us. This yearning for another place could even be described as nostalgic.

I believe this hunger to transcend our world reflects an innate desire to reconnect with God. We came into the world with a closer relationship with Him. That was lost when we entered into a life of focus on self—otherwise known as a life of sin. We miss what we know we should have. We long to have it back.

Fortunately, because of the work of Christ, someday that relationship can be fully restored. In the meantime, perhaps we can content ourselves with gentle reminders of what we ultimately hope for, as we hunt for the songs that move us.