I grew up listening almost exclusively to worship music and CCM.  The only secular music I head was Alan Sherman, Peter, Paul and Mary, and the stuff in department stores.  When I first started listening to country, I was slightly taken aback by the striking similarity between love songs and worship songs.  At first I didn't know what to do with this possible sacriledge (I know, I know...)--can you love another human like that and it be ok?  (Needing people was something the teenage me wouldn't have admitted to, I was self sufficient--or pretended to be--and only thought of need in reference to God).  CCM isn't exactly known for its love songs and we made fun of the "God as my boyfriend" songs by Jaci Velasquez.

 

Listening to the (sometimes comical) highs and lows of human love in its uncut, dramatic, devoted, pained, sometimes selfish, sometimes selfless, and sometimes silly form was very educational.   All of a sudden the love God has for his Church began to make sense.  The similarity was something God put there--the romance between man and woman is a reflection of the romance between Christ and the Church--common knowledge in Christian circles, yes, but when you listen to secular love songs...suddenly you realize the depth that divine metaphor has.  The significance of the devoted language in worship songs had been, to a point, lost on me because I didn't know what it looked like on earth. 

 

Besides being a course in human nature (all writers are students thereof) I learned something unexpected from the local country music station.  God loves me.