Tom Tripp – Guest Golumnist
Many popular songs sing of unending love, but many of those singers and songwriters have discovered that it is much easier to sing about endless love than to live it out.
In 1975, Daryl Dragon and Toni Tennille, better known as Captain and Tennille, got married and made a hit with the song “Love Will Keep us Together.” The song promises: “Young and beautiful, but someday your looks will be gone. / When the others turn you off, who’ll be turning you on? / I will; I will; I will. / I will be there to share forever. / Love will keep us together.”
However, on January 16, 2014, after 39 years of marriage, Tennille filed for divorce. Dragon didn’t even know about it until he was served with divorce papers. The reason Tennille gave for the divorce had to do with Dragon’s battle with a neurological condition similar to Parkinson’s disease. Apparently, love could not keep Toni in the marriage when Daryl’s health began to deteriorate.
On October 18, 1975, Lionel Richie married his college sweetheart, Brenda Harvey. In 1981, he recorded “Endless Love” with Diana Ross. The song declares, “‘Cause you, you mean the world to me. / Oh, I know I’ve found in you my endless love.”
But in 1986, Richie began an extramarital affair with Diane Alexander. It is reported that Brenda discovered Lionel and Diane together in a Beverly Hills hotel room in 1988 by knocking on the door and calling out, “Room service.”
In 1972, Al Green’s song, “Let’s Stay Together,” reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song declares, “Why some people break up then turn around and make up / I just can’t see. / You’d never do that to me, would you, Baby? / Staying around you is all I see…. / Let’s stay together, / Lovin’ you whether times are good or bad, happy or sad.”
Yet, on October 18, 1974, Green’s girlfriend, Mary Woodson White, who was actually married to someone else, got mad at Green for refusing to marry her. She doused him with a pan of boiling grits while he was in the bathtub, then she found his .38 and killed herself.
Enduring love is easier to sing about than to live out.
The Bible is filled with promises of Jesus’ love for us, but how can we trust Jesus’ promises to be more enduring than those of Toni Tennille or Lionel Richie or Al Green?
The difference is that Jesus backed up his promise by laying down his life for us. We can be confident that one who took upon himself all of our sin will not come up with a reason to turn his back on us. We can be certain that one who was willing to die in agony on a cross will remain faithful to us through hell and high water. We can be sure that one who rose from the dead has already removed every obstacle that could get in the way of loving us endlessly.
Alexander Whyte sums it up well: “The love of Christ has no border; it has no shore; it has no bottom. The love of Christ is boundless; it is bottomless; it is infinite; it is divine…. We shall come to the shore, we shall strike the bottom of every other love; but never of the love of Christ…. You will never come to the length of it, or to the breadth of it, or to the depth of it, or to the height of it. To all eternity, the love of Christ to you will be new.”
You can be certain that Christ’s love for you endures forever. ■
