Tonight was the first night of Jimmy Fallon hosting The Tonight Show. Though I know that this is a big thing and people have been talking about Jay Leno leaving The Tonight Show for months now, I didn’t know that NBC was going to broadcast Jimmy Fallon’s first show as host tonight. Plus I really don’t watch TV all that much to know what’s going on. Anyway, I happened to find out about the show by watching a commercial and I eventually watched it – and I have to say that it was a great show.
His two guests tonight were Will Smith (by the way, I did not know Will Smith was 45 years old! Time is flying by) and the rock band U2.
As the show was ending, U2 played a song called “Ordinary Love”. It’s a song that was written to honor Nelson Mandela, and it was on the soundtrack of Mandela’s biography film (which I have yet to see). It was my first time hearing the song. It was played acoustic, and as Bono was singing the lyrics, the song just touched my heart as I laid in my bed. I didn’t really understand all of the lyrics initially when they played the song, so I went online to listen to the song over and over… and I even found the chords of the song on my guitar so I could sing/play it myself.
The lyrics in the verse and the chorus are so powerful! There is a line in a verse that I found so meaningful – “I can’t fight you anymore, It’s you I’m fighting for”. Just think about that… as war is waged in our own households and communities, between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives. It’s like people fight against the same people who they love the most. In the chorus it says – “We cannot reach any higher, If we can’t deal with ordinary love”. And, that is so true.
So what does Ordinary Love mean to you? I feel it is the feeling that is felt when anyone sees a mother holding her child. It is the feeling that tells you to open the door for an elderly person. It’s what tells us to give to others who are in need. It is the opposite of hate and conflict. Because even if you dislike or disagree with someone, ordinary love brings the realization that I don’t have to fight or argue with them because of our differences. It is the essence of what makes us inherently the same, as we all desire to be loved.
1 John 4:18-20 (NASB) – There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.