{"id":872,"date":"2021-07-19T08:20:12","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T12:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=872"},"modified":"2021-07-19T08:20:12","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T12:20:12","slug":"and-in-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/07\/19\/and-in-the-end\/","title":{"rendered":"And in the End"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout July we\u2019re taking an in-depth look at Proverbs, the Bible\u2019s one-of-a-kind book about our never-ending need for wisdom.<\/em>

In the summer of 1969, the world\u2019s most famous rock band was falling apart.

Splintered by long-simmering creative and relational spats, the Beatles somehow recorded Abbey Road<\/em>, which fans and critics eventually came to regard as a masterpiece.  It was the last time the Fab Four gathered to make music in the same room at the same time. 

The album is noteworthy for the medley (also known as the Long One) that takes up the last 16-plus minutes of Side Two.  Paul McCartney and producer George Martin, intrigued by the idea of patching together a series of short tunes to make something grander, dipped into the Beatles songwriting vault from previous years.

They found snippets of songs that had never been fully fleshed out (Mean Mr. Mustard<\/em>) as well as promising ideas that had never been officially recorded (Golden Slumbers<\/em>).  There\u2019s a song in which the band complains about not being properly compensated (You Never Give Me Your Money<\/em>), a tune commemorating King Louis XIV of France (Sun King<\/em>), and an offbeat number about a groupie wearing a plastic outfit who once went out with John Lennon (Polythene Pam<\/em>).  There\u2019s even a ballad recounting the time a desperate female admirer broke into Paul\u2019s house (She Came in Through the<\/em>Bathroom Window<\/em>).  Some of the songs are fast, others slow; some are tender, others off the wall. 

When the editing was done, nine tunes \u2013 each of them a half-minute to four minutes in length \u2013 had been cobbled together to create the medley.  McCartney wrote the last one, The End<\/em>, from scratch.  It features the only drum solo in the Beatles\u2019 entire repertoire (Ringo had to be talked into it, since he disdained such fads) and enthusiastic guitar improvisations from John, Paul, and George. 

The End<\/em> marked \u201cthe end\u201d in several senses of the word.  It was the end of the medley, the end of Abbey Road<\/em>, and the end of the Beatles \u2013 the very last song they recorded collectively.  It also represented a thematic end \u2013 an artistic final statement after a decade of rocking and rolling. McCartney, aware of the fact that Shakespeare had wrapped up several of his compositions with rhyming couplets, decided to write one of his own: 

And in the end<\/em>
The love you take<\/em>
Is equal to<\/em>
The love you make.<\/em>

Lennon, who was certainly not McCartney\u2019s best friend at the end of their time with the Beatles, was unimpressed with the medley.  \u201cIt\u2019s junk,\u201d he later said, \u201cjust bits of songs thrown together.\u201d

Others have disagreed.  Critics have hailed it as a brilliant farewell.  And not a few fans of the group, even after more than half a century, have said that if they have only 17 minutes left to live, this is what they want to hear.  Here\u2019s the full medley<\/a> (just in case you haven\u2019t listened to it since you got up this morning).   

If the patchwork quilt approach worked for the Long One, it also seems to be at the heart of the book of Proverbs.

The 500 or so one-sentence proverbs that fill chapters 10 through 31 are not arranged thematically.  They appear randomly strung together.  Reading such back-to-back nuggets of wisdom can feel jarring.  Consider this block of verses chosen at random from Proverbs 18:9-13: 

\u201cOne who is slack in his work is brother to one who destroys.\u201d Message: Don\u2019t be lazy<\/em>.  \u201cThe name of the Lord is a fortified tower; the righteous run to it and are safe.\u201d Message: Wise people trust God<\/em>.  \u201cThe wealth of the rich is their fortified city; they imagine it a wall too high to scale.\u201d Message: Rich people had better rethink their ultimate security<\/em>.  \u201cBefore a downfall the heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor.\u201d Message: If we don\u2019t humble ourselves, circumstances will do the job for us<\/em>.  \u201cTo answer before listening \u2013 that is folly and shame.\u201d Message:  Listen, listen, listen<\/em>.

Disconnected as they seem, what do these verses have in common?  They are all components of a life well-lived, of a life in pursuit of wisdom. 

Here we need to address an important question: 

Are all the proverbs in the book of Proverbs created equal \u2013 or are there a few that rise above the rest and give greater meaning to the whole?

One such candidate is Proverbs 10:12:  \u201cHatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.\u201d  That\u2019s an unusually powerful statement, especially because it resonates with New Testament texts like I Peter 4:7 (\u201cLove covers over a multitude of sins\u201d), not to mention Paul\u2019s assurance that if we love God and love people, we fulfill every demand of the Old Testament (Romans 13:8-10).

In the end\u2026life is all about love.

Which brings us back to Paul McCartney\u2019s famous couplet:  \u201cAnd in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.\u201d 

That\u2019s a simple declaration of the Law of Reciprocity.  What you give is what you get.  As a software programmer might put it, GIGO:  Garbage In, Garbage Out.  Whatever you deposit is exactly what you get back, no more and no less. 

If that\u2019s true \u2013 if that\u2019s how love works in the universe \u2013 then all of us are sunk. 

Think about our relationship with God.  If the love we receive from God \u201cis equal to\u201d the love we send his way, then God help us all.  For none of us even remotely loves God deeply, continually, and unconditionally \u2013 which is the only kind of love that can possibly save us from our addictions, selfishness, and pride. 

One of my friends calls his mother every Sunday evening.  Their conversations always end the same way.  He says, \u201cLove you, Mom.\u201d  And she always answers, \u201cI loved you first.\u201d

God loved us first.  The apostle John makes that clear in I John 4:10:  \u201cThis is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us\u2026\u201d  When John declares a few verses later that God is Love, we can imagine our creator as a kind of fountain that never stops flowing.  God provides the tide of love that floats every human boat. 

When Proverbs tells us that love covers over all wrongs, we can receive that as a challenge to love each other as never before \u2013 and never to lose our conviction that love will ultimately conquer hatred.

But the only love that can possibly drown our sorrows and sins won\u2019t come from us.

In the end, it\u2019s all about our willingness to humbly receive God\u2019s love and then give it away.

Or, as Paul McCartney put it in another song, \u201cAll you need is love.\u201d

His love.   <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout July we\u2019re taking an in-depth look at Proverbs, the Bible\u2019s one-of-a-kind book about our never-ending need for wisdom. In the summer of 1969, the world\u2019s most famous rock band was falling apart. Splintered by long-simmering creative and relational spats, the Beatles somehow recorded Abbey Road, which fans and critics eventually came to regard as a masterpiece.  It was the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[78,123],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gods-love","tag-proverbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions\/874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}