In Moments Like These

Back in Cursillo days, there was a particular song that began like this:

In moments like these I sing out a song,
I sing out a love song to Jesus.

Love songs to Jesus, it turns out, are their own little genre, and apparently they've evolved into, well, romantic ballads. At least that's what I'd heard, but being a stalwart 1940/1982 kind of guy, I hadn't really been exposed to these that much.

So this morning we, er, people at church sang a song for which I have provided the word cloud at right. I didn't sing it, at least not after a line or so, because I noticed that (a) it was a love song, and (b) it wasn't to anyone in particular. As you can see, there's no reference to Jesus, God, Christ, salvation, the cross, or indeed anything even slightly religious. You could sing it to your wife or your boyfriend or your pet monkey or even you favorite well-padded armchair without changing a word. Oddly enough, the one missing word in all of this is, well "love".

But it hardly seems to matter. Lyrics don't get more generic than this; whether it is a hymn of adoration to the godhead or an ode to one's romantic interest, it's vapid and trite. Why should we sing this kind of this rubbish?