I like the school’s theme song for the 2021-22 school year. It’s called “Let it be Love” by Canadian band, The Color (although, I expected them to call themselves “The Colour.”)  The song is catchy and fun—toe-tapping, even, and I’m not really a toe-tapper. It sticks and I catch myself humming the chorus as I walk out of chapel.

The reason I like this song is because it’s not just a Sunday song and because it is so biological.

Blurring the Barrier

The song pushed back against a silly notion that has been a part of Christianity for a long time. The Apostle Paul dealt with it regularly in his letters and it’s been running though our North American Christian culture to this day.

The silly idea is this-we (sometimes) divide our lives up into two categories—the Sacred and the Secular. In other words, God stuff and ordinary life. In the Sacred category we have Sunday and church, prayer, and devotions. In the Secular category we have work and weekdays, entertainment, and hobbies.

This song blurs the barrier between these two categories:

In my home
Every day
Rule and reign
Lord have your way

Every moment I’m livin’
Every breath that I’m givin’

In this song we ask God to “rule and reign,” not just in church or chapel, but “in my home.” Not just Sunday, but “every moment I’m livin’”

Everything Significant

I also like that this song is so biological. Dividing body from soul is a part of the Sacred/Secular divide. We sometimes think that activities of the body, like sex and eating, are spiritually inferior to those of the soul, like praying and singing praise and worship songs. But in reality, there is no separation; everything we do with our bodies is spiritually significant. And everything that is spiritually significant involves bodies.

We worship with our bodies as well as our souls.

In my heart
Meet me here
Draw me near
This is my prayer

Heart and Lungs

I love how both body and soul are part of the song “Let It Be Love.”

Let it be love
That fills my song
That fills my lungs
Every beat of my heart

Here, the word “heart” is used in both a spiritual and a physical sense. On the one hand it is the site of our meeting with God. On the other it’s the blood pumping organ in our chest. And then there’s the lungs—the physical organs that are necessary to sing praises to our creator. Body and soul together.

This song will remind us every time we sing it this year, that all of life belongs to God. Sunday does for sure, but so do Saturday night and Monday morning. We will be reminded that we worship God when we sing, but we also worship him when we work and play. That we can connect with God in our morning prayers, but also as we stand in front of the bathroom mirror and behold one of his most precious creations.

Yeah…I like this song.