Here’s an article I wrote for our churches college class website. It’s about a year old, hence the reference to being in class still. Enjoy.
I’ve been learning about sound in one of my classes. I learned that in order for sound to exist, four things must occur:
1. there must be a vibration
2. there must be something that causes that
vibration
3. there must be a medium through which
that vibration must travel
4. there must be something to receive that vibration and interpret it as sound.
For example, I pluck a string on my guitar, which causes the string to vibrate.
That vibration travels through the air, and my ear says, “Hey, that’s a guitar.”
After estabishing these facts I went on to learn that if all of these things must
happen for sound to exist, then for a deaf person, sound does not exist. I know,
this sounds obvious, but I mean that not only can they not hear sound, but since
their ears cannot receive vibrations as sound waves, then literally, sound does not
exist for them. This saddened me because I know how wonderful it is to hear
things and how much better it is for me at least to hear someone speak to me rather
than have them write something to me. We also learned that though a deaf person
cannot hear vibrations, they can still feel them, and even to a greater extent than
those who can hear. I realized that I was focusing on the wrong thing: here I was
thinking that sound was the foundation, when really the vibration is what is most
important, and each person perceives it in a different way. And even the vibration
relies on an outside source to get it started. I know, this is alot, but bear with me,
I’m making a big leap here. I was driving around today and I suddenly realized that
this whole concept can be applied to love. Love being the vibration, God being the
cause of that vibration, life as the medium through which it travels, and us receiving it
in different forms. This idea also helped me understand how love can be misunderstood.
We can look at another person, and hear what they have to say, and they explain love
as a feeling, and it’s so wonderful and you should want that feeling too. And people try to
get that feeling and when they don’t get it, they become frustrated because they think love
is a feeling, and if they aren’t feeling it, then they must not be loved. But this simply isn’t true.
Love is not a feeling, feeling is a feeling. Love is a vibration, and feeling is just one
way for a person to perceive it. Just as we can perceive vibrations in different ways; we
can hear them, we can feel them, we can even see them; so it is with love. God has provided
many different ways for us to perceive love and many different mediums through which it
can travel. Does this make sense? I hope it does. I hope that someone reading this who has
thought of love in strict defining terms will look at it in a new light now. I personally am
looking forward to thinking more on this idea, and looking for different way to perceive love.
Isn’t God awesome? Peace.
