All You Need Is Love - The Story of God and John Lennon
When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.' Barbara Bloom
You probably know at least one Beatles song. There's Ticket to Ride, All You Need Is Love, Hey Jude, Help! - a treasure chest of songs that any band hoping for a record deal would give the world to own.
A Beatles song is a two and a half minute masterclass on how to write the perfect pop record. A melody that will stay with you forever with lyrics to match. Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes raw, always perfect. You would never know that behind all that Rock 'n Roll was a man in pieces.
John Lennon's childhood was deeply marked by tragedy, to the point where a distraught John was asked to choose to between living with either his mother or his father. He chose his mother, but in the end, he lost them both: his mother was killed by a drunk driver when John was 16, he didn't see his father again until he was 21.
In a searing song called Mother written by Lennon after the Beatles split, Lennon wrote 'Mother, you had me but I never had you, I wanted you but you didn't want me...Father, you left me but I never left you, I needed you but you didn't need me'. Mother is a song that could be the anthem of abandoned children everywhere. It is a song that could easily have been written for Lennon's first son, Julian, who also saw very little of his troubled father.
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For a man who professed not to believe in God, Lennon talked and wrote a lot about Him. He said that 'God is a concept by which we measure our pain', he said that the Beatles were 'more poular than Jesus', he said 'imagine there's no heaven..no hell below us, above us only sky'. He said 'all you need is love'.
John Lennon, who grew up with a ripped apart concept of the love of a Mother or Father came to this conclusion - 'You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway'. I can understand how someone could be hurt so badly that they cannot believe in a loving Father in Heaven. I can understand how alone a child like that must feel. And how angry.
So what do we do with anger like that? With loneliness that overwhelming? Do we preach or pray? Love or hate? Condemn or forgive? Jesus said that He came for the sick not for those who saw no need of a Doctor. He came for the prostitute and the leper, the unclean and the cast out. He saw the child they used to be. The child that got lost along the way.
People get angry for a reason. Let's remember that when we pray. I do not see Jesus abandoning anyone who needs Him. Not even the hardened, convicted criminal who was nailed to the cross next to His. God is not a concept, there is a home for lost children in Heaven and I dearly pray that in his final moments, Lennon made it home.
'God's love actively does you good. His love is full of blood, sweat, tears, and cries. He suffered for you. He fights for you, defending the afflicted. He fights with you pursuing you in powerful tenderness so that He can change you. He's jealous, not detached. His sort of empathy and sympathy speaks out, with words of truth to set you free from sin and misery.' David Powlison, Seeing With New Eyes
You probably know at least one Beatles song. There's Ticket to Ride, All You Need Is Love, Hey Jude, Help! - a treasure chest of songs that any band hoping for a record deal would give the world to own.
A Beatles song is a two and a half minute masterclass on how to write the perfect pop record. A melody that will stay with you forever with lyrics to match. Sometimes funny, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes raw, always perfect. You would never know that behind all that Rock 'n Roll was a man in pieces.
John Lennon's childhood was deeply marked by tragedy, to the point where a distraught John was asked to choose to between living with either his mother or his father. He chose his mother, but in the end, he lost them both: his mother was killed by a drunk driver when John was 16, he didn't see his father again until he was 21.
In a searing song called Mother written by Lennon after the Beatles split, Lennon wrote 'Mother, you had me but I never had you, I wanted you but you didn't want me...Father, you left me but I never left you, I needed you but you didn't need me'. Mother is a song that could be the anthem of abandoned children everywhere. It is a song that could easily have been written for Lennon's first son, Julian, who also saw very little of his troubled father.
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For a man who professed not to believe in God, Lennon talked and wrote a lot about Him. He said that 'God is a concept by which we measure our pain', he said that the Beatles were 'more poular than Jesus', he said 'imagine there's no heaven..no hell below us, above us only sky'. He said 'all you need is love'.
John Lennon, who grew up with a ripped apart concept of the love of a Mother or Father came to this conclusion - 'You're just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway'. I can understand how someone could be hurt so badly that they cannot believe in a loving Father in Heaven. I can understand how alone a child like that must feel. And how angry.
So what do we do with anger like that? With loneliness that overwhelming? Do we preach or pray? Love or hate? Condemn or forgive? Jesus said that He came for the sick not for those who saw no need of a Doctor. He came for the prostitute and the leper, the unclean and the cast out. He saw the child they used to be. The child that got lost along the way.
People get angry for a reason. Let's remember that when we pray. I do not see Jesus abandoning anyone who needs Him. Not even the hardened, convicted criminal who was nailed to the cross next to His. God is not a concept, there is a home for lost children in Heaven and I dearly pray that in his final moments, Lennon made it home.
'God's love actively does you good. His love is full of blood, sweat, tears, and cries. He suffered for you. He fights for you, defending the afflicted. He fights with you pursuing you in powerful tenderness so that He can change you. He's jealous, not detached. His sort of empathy and sympathy speaks out, with words of truth to set you free from sin and misery.' David Powlison, Seeing With New Eyes
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