My son is a big fan of making playlists. He collects all his favourite songs, pretends they are from one band, goes on to name that band, their newly formed album, and of course loves us to play it on car journeys (over and over).

Recently as we talking about music I told him that I would like to make him a playlist as well. I would make the playlist of songs that were important or formative to me as a kid/teenager.

This weekend I made it. I had a lot of fun, and it brought back a lot of memories. Last night stretched later than we expected as my wife and I played some of those songs. We sang them, skipped to the next, talked about them, and shared what they meant to us. I went to bed with a smile on my face. I even woke up with a smile on my face thinking and replaying those tunes in my head.

As I reflected on that fun the next morning I had a thought and asked myself a question that I have asked before.

How powerful are our emotions?

You see, before making that playlist I’d had a frustrating day, not a bad one, just frustrating. Meetings, issues I had to deal with, challenges, nothing really bad, but enough to be annoying. However, as I listened to those songs my frustrations melted away into Radiohead’s genius, 2Unlimited’s thumping kick, U2’s searching lyrics, searing Europe guitar solos, Brit pop, and some ‘one hit sing a long rippers’ – (yes, I realise my taste is varied!)

In some senses it’s good that I felt great doing that. These were memories and it was fun to relive them. There’s a powerful practise in remembering, it’s often redemptive in nature as well. But I guess what stuck out to me more the next morning was that it made me realise how easy it was to escape real life through emotional highs and far off thoughts. The feeling was so much better than frustration….but the reality was the issues that frustrated me still technically remained.

Our emotions have such a power over us. God created us to have and feel emotion. It’s important for us to feel joy, happiness, fulfilment. Even the more ‘negative’ emotions we feel, emotions I’m unsure we were meant to feel pre fall, are helpful for us as we process the pain of our world.

The problem, as always, is that we have replaced the God who gave us many of these emotions with the emotions themselves.

We are driven and governed by our emotions and desires for connection, affirmation, love, as well as our sadness, grief, and pain. We serve them as if they were to be trusted, we give them a lot of attention as the existence or absence of them has such a profound effect on our lives. As I have already highlighted the problem with this is they are so changeable and influenced by the world around us. If my happiness can be altered by a song surely that happiness is rather thin.

Surely we must build our lives on something much deeper. Something that will not be altered so easily. Our emotions will absolutely still have a place in our lives but they will be built on Gods foundation rather than being the foundation themselves. When/if we begin to do that then we enter into a much more stable state. The book of Psalms say it like this;

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging Psalm 46:1-3

Right, I’m off to listen to a playlist or two!