Social Experiment No. 2

I'm sure you have an iPod. If you don't, you will. If you say you will never own one, you will one day say you love iPods. If you own a Zune, you will trade it in and use the cash toward an iPod. Fact is, the iPod is part of our everyday life, a facet of who we are, and an item some people use on a daily basis. On average, most people have over 2,000 songs in the song library these days. The average song length is around 4 minutes which means that a library of 2,000 songs with an average length of 4 minutes would give you 8000 minutes of songs or around 133 hours which translates to around 5 1/2 days of music, granted you play the music non-stop. That's a lot of music. I only have a mere 2 days worth of songs in my personal library. But it feels like 2 days of songs I hardly listen to.

In my music library, there are songs that I have listen to dozens of times. There are also songs I have listened to only once or twice. Some stuff on my iPod has never even been listened to. Reason is I get in these ruts where I like the same thing over and over again even though I have hundreds of songs on my iPod that I have listened to only a few times! I think about it and ask myself why I leave them on there if I don't like them. And when I put my iPod on shuffle, put the songs on random, I find myself just skipping through a horde of songs I don't listen to in order to get to the same songs I listen to all the time. But recently, I decided to try something new; I dared myself to set my playlist on random, let it run, and just see what happens. Richter once said, "Music is the poetry of the air." I certainly believe that writing is a powerful facet to society, but it is important to remember that music is just as powerful, if not more so. I like to think that the songs I listen to are like soundtracks to my life, they are a way to complement my feelings or emotions at the time being. That would be 2 whole days of music for me to feel every day.

Here is my call to you, the "social experiment" part if you will. I dare you to start your day tomorrow with your iPod on shuffle, starting out simply by listening to the first song and then trusting that God will orchestrate your iPod to play just what you need when you need that. For instance, as I was listening to my iPod one day, reminiscing about my friends Chris and Garret who like rapping to lame 1980's hip-hop songs and lo and behold, next song was a hit from the Digital Underground. Or the time when I was preparing for a speaking engagement and I was getting really nervous, and the Lord led me to listen to my iPod and the first song on shuffle was Stars by David Crowder, my favorite song in the whole world which put me at ease. It's amazing the power of song and even the irony behind it at time, and so I dare you this week to just let your iPod play, and not skip a song. See what happens. And as each day goes on, I encourage you to post what your song of the day somewhere (Facebook, desk, on this blog, etc.). May each day you live be filled with the perfect song for the perfect whether.

Today, my song is my favorites. It reminds me how God takes me and lifts me to heights I can hardly believe are possible. Beauty and redemption, undeserved- the soundtrack to my life!