How did you find Valentine’s Day this year? For some reason I found it harder than usual. I kept seeing people walking around with flowers, and the supermarkets all seemed to be filled with love heart balloons. I couldn’t help but feel a little lonely.
In many ways, you would’ve thought yet another pop star ballad, released specially for Valentine’s Day, would’ve made me feel even more bitter about the whole thing. Instead, I found myself playing Sam Smith’s ‘Love is a stillness’ on repeat and reflecting on God’s love for us.
First of all, there’s the beauty (in my opinion) of the song itself. It’s short, gentle and in many ways quite simple. Just a rich piano and Sam’s gorgeous voice. That in itself was enough to make me pause and enjoy a beautiful gift from our creator God.
But then there are the words, about falling in love and finding a ‘stillness’ you’ve never known before. After all the anxiety/chaos/stress of trying to figure life out, in comes love, and with it a stillness.
When we’re living in the love of God, we know a new kind of stillness.
Isn’t that so true of the love God shows us in Jesus? ‘Perfect love drives out fear’ (1 John 4:18), bringing peace. In Psalm 46 God tells us not to worry but to ‘Be still, and know that I am God’. Be still. When we’re living in the love of God, we know a new kind of stillness.
If you’re thinking it’s a stretch to see biblical imagery in the words of a pop song, the lyrics go on to compare the singer’s lover to a rock, the ground when they’re not strong. The imagery of God as our rock, our solid foundation is all over the Bible. See Psalm 18 for example:
‘The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge…’ (Psalm 18:2).
If you still need convincing, the next lines are about someone who shares the weight of all Sam’s mistakes. I know that to be true of Jesus, who with endless patience tells me to come to him with my weariness and burdens, and redeems my life from the pit when I’ve made a mess of things yet again.
Sam Smith probably didn’t expect this ballad to encourage a single, celibate Christian and remind them of Jesus’s love on Valentine’s Day. Although, who knows, maybe Sam has come to know Jesus’s love too. That would be a wonderful thing. Either way, I thank God for the song and how it’s reminded me of all these truths, of the perfect love he shows me that no human lover ever could.
