My Favorite Album
Yesterday, a friend was sharing some of his musical artist preferences with me and I thought I would reciprocate and share my favorite album with him.
I have to stop here and point out that for most of my life, I have thought about music in terms of albums and songs. In college (when I assembled my first good stereo system), I would buy an album when it was released and record it using a cassette recorder for daily listening. In this way, I could save the actual album from undue wear as long as possible. My only other alternative was to wait for a song to come on the radio and try to start the recorder to capture it into a mix tape. I know the world doesn’t work that way now but some music, like my album, a collection of songs from various artists, isn’t available to stream except for maybe song by song. It’s sad.
Anyway, this album brought back memories of how I first heard it…Chris, the friend I had at home and in college, before he got married, would occasionally come and visit us. We had just moved to New Orleans and Chris wanted to come and stay with us a few days. He had a heart bigger than almost any person I’ve ever known but he did lack any kind of financial acumen. At this point in our lives, none of us had much of a financial safety net so to speak. We were living paycheck to paycheck.
On the way down to New Orleans, Chris’ older car needed a new tire and so he had to spend a good chunk of his traveling money just making it to our house. He introduced me to this album titled “No Boundaries” from 1988. I am pretty sure it was one of those inexpensive albums that Walmart (or Kmart or Sears), liked to have available to encourage you to buy that new-fangled CD player on the market.
I heard this album and fell in love with it. At that time, I was studying for actuarial exams and the music was all laid back music that you could play in the background so that other noises didn’t disturb your studying. I tried unsuccessfully to get him to sell it to me. Eventually, when he was ready to leave and return home, he needed some additional funds for his expenses. I offered to give him those funds for the album. He reluctantly agreed. I owned the album.
“What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. Do not speak evil against one another, brothers. The one who speaks against a brother or judges his brother, speaks evil against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. There is only one lawgiver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you to judge your neighbor?” - James 4:1-12 ESV
“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” - 1 John 1:5-10
To say I felt guilty about using my position of power to get what I wanted would be a good insight of how I felt. A couple of years later, I found another copy of the CD and gave him back his original (and apologized), but I still had that guilt on my soul. A few years after that he was married, had a new born daughter and was fighting, unsuccessfully, cancer that took him from me.
He never held how I connived from him that album against me but 30 years later, I still think about it.
