On the way to dropping my middle child off at school this morning dear old dad had the 70’s channel on the radio.  A song came on that I knew very well, but that also had one of those funny misunderstood lyric’s stories to it.  The song was Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets to Paradise.”

In a rare moment in my youth, my mother let me pick the music in the car.  I was a rock n’ roll kind of guy and so that's what I tuned in on the radio.   Two Tickets to Paradise came on and half way through the song I could see my mom was enjoying it.  I was surprised because it wasn’t her type of music and at that age, it’s hard to imagine your parents liking anything that you like.  But…my mom only liked it because she misheard the lyrics of the song.  If you’re familiar, you know there's a line repeated often, “We've waited so long, we've waited so long.”  My mother thought Eddie Money was singing, “Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord.”  It was a natural progression for her, because the song was about paradise and praising the Lord is going to be part of that experience.  

Funny, but maybe also a lesson.

After dropping Cardie off and heading to the church, I thought about what my mom heard and what that said about her heart, about what she was seeking to tune into during her everyday life.  Paradise had just one connotation to her.  My mom was seeking praising the Lord, seeking to hear God in everything and anything.   The truth was that God was likely one of the furthest things from my mind when I was singing along to the song.   It revealed and still reveals how our hearts and our attitudes towards Christ allow us to see and hear the world around us.

If I watch the news or scroll social media, I will definitely be tuned into simply awful stuff and tuned out of matters of faith.  But that says as much about me as it does the media I’m consuming.  I should be seeing other things in that news and doom scrolling, my heart should be set on God and in that I’m certain I would pull different things out of all I bombard myself with.  I need to listen with my mom’s ears.  Perhaps I need to work harder at leaning into something that was said about David, that he was a man “after God’s own heart.”  How do I do that?  An article I read this morning suggested come characteristics of David’s life (when he was doing things right) that would help.  The article highlighted David’s faith, love, trust, humility, integrity, forgiveness and his worship of God.

I’m willing to bet I’d have a much better chance of hearing Eddie Money sing, “praise the Lord” if my ears were trying harder to tune into faith, love, trust, humility, integrity, forgiveness and worshipping God.