Hello everyone! I can’t believe in a few weeks the Raleigh Fellows of 2025 will be a thing of the past. Summers always fly by, and this one flew. Have I really started a new chapter of life so quickly? This summer I’ve moved into a new home with some new friends, started a new job, and continued exploring my new home of Raleigh. While doing all these new things, I’ve spent a good bit of my free time driving down to Georgia to see my long-distance girlfriend. She is usually in the Midwest doing grad school. While she was in Georgia this summer for an internship, I had to take every opportunity I had to make the 6-hour car ride before she’s back at school.
When we’re together, our time together is fairly consistent. We usually go for a long walk, stop by a thrift shop, get a sweet treat, and then crash out because the heat is too much for us. Days like this are gold to me. On one of our visits to a thrift store this summer, the radio caught my attention. It was one of those songs where, before you know it, you find yourself dancing and whip out your phone to Shazam it before it’s gone.
Don’t Huzzle For Love – Apostles
First thing about this song. Huzzle? That word dates the song way back to the time of Funk and Disco. Thank God! My parents’ prime was in the 70s. Because of how they raised me, music from that era will always feel like home. Second thing I notice. Apostles?! C’mon! How fun??
The song goes in circles around the words: “Don’t huzzle for love. Because it’s gonna come to you!” I think God loves this song. And I think God wants me to lean in here.
Have you ever felt like love is hard to receive? Most of our life, we fight so hard for love. Like it’s the prize to the game of life. I think the need to be loved is behind everything I do. And I think that when you wait and wish to know that you are loved, that feeling of longing becomes all you know. When love finally finds its way to you, you can’t believe it’s true. We push back on it, like we don’t deserve it.
Some days it’s clear to me that love has come into my life. God reminds me of that truth constantly. As much as I’m resistant to that love, it’s here. I don’t deserve it, but it’s here. I feel it and I’ve got it. In the Bible we often see God promising people justice. He promises to make things right for us. But sometimes that justice of “making things right” develops into something a whole lot more complex. It is the quality of God that is “making things better than they ever were.” My friend, that’s redemption.
Throughout my days, I fight for security, affirmation, and love. It’s part of being human. We’re sick for peace. And when love and peace have finally made their way to me, at no effort of my own earning, I push back on them. I think it’s because I’m learning that I can’t huzzle to be loved. I’ve gotta let it come to me.
I really had no intention to go this direction with my blog. I really only thought I was going to share how excited I am to see new fellows around the church. But hey, when your positive thoughts are on a roll. Roll on! To our newest fellows: welcome! I can’t wait for y’all to do this next.
So in the wise words of Apostles: “Don’t huzzle for love. Because it’s gonna come to you!” I’m gonna be dancing to these words from now on!
-Skip