Where's my heart? Check my iPod

Matthew 6
¹⁹"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I like music. I listen to a lot of music. And I don't discriminate. As long as it has words and I can sing along (in the privacy of my own car at 70 miles per hour), I am happy. And the most recent love of my life is my first iPod. I think you can know a person through musical choices.

For instance, from the top 25 most played, you can tell:
1. I was a child of the 80s. Fully half of the songs in my top 25 come from either U2 or...get ready, the Beastie Boys. To be fair, you can't beat a little Beastie Boys to walk to. Seriously. They are also good to check cross stitch charts by...just sayin'.

2. Music to get me moving is big...All the Single Ladies and a little Will Smith round out the half that I call "music to move" by...there are more. And I'm sure they're just as shameful (Black Eyed Peas, Eminem, Luda...apparently I prefer to walk to some hip hop, urban beats), but they don't make it into the list. And music to get me moving in the right direction..."Only the World" by Mandisa, "I Will Not be Moved" by Nicole Nordeman, "Let's Go" by Mark Schultz (this one's dangerous 'cause it makes me want to pack my bags and go).

3. Love is big...love here and God's love. Contrast "Gotta Be Somebody" by Nickelback with "Yours" by Stephen Curtis Chapman. You probably can't get much further apart than Nickelback and SCC but I am eclectic. The video is a new favorite by Francesca Battistelli, "Free to Be Me." I had to overcome my natural aversion to the beautiful people to love it, but I do.

4. And I spend a lot of time singing about someday, about heaven. MercyMe kills me. There's the best-known "I Can Only Imagine" but in my Top 25 is "Finally Home" that on the wrong day "hug my daddy's neck and tell him that I missed him, tell him all about the man that I became and hope that it pleased him" can just Tear. Me. Up. And I listen to it again and again. Chris Tomlin "I Will Rise" is my new favorite and Jeremy Camp, "There Will Be a Day."

And that's just the Top 25. Nothing country, although I have some. No Madonna or Prince or Counting Crows or Eagles or Jimmy Buffet or All American Rejects or Pink or...and they're all there. So what can you know about me?

I'm not ready to be fitted for my halo yet. I'm pretty sure the Prince tracks alone preclude that.

GenX is getting a little old and out of touch (OK, maybe just me). The Beastie Boys should not feature so prominently.

I spend a lot time thinking about God's love, what it means to me, and the promise of heaven. I didn't used to spend so much time anticipating heaven. Really, who looks forward to sitting on clouds and playing a harp all day? I don't even know the harp and I don't think it has a beat you can move to. Two things have changed that. My father died and I felt the separation from heaven keenly for the first time. And I read Randy Alcorn's "Heaven" and understood that the future holds more than harp playing.

I guess this is my transparency week, because it doesn't get any more personal than showing you what I've written and what plays on my iPod. Well, Ok, I could show you my amazing stack of dirty laundry and perhaps the disorder of my closets. But I'm not going to. That's probably over the line into TMI-land.