“What the World Needs Now is Love” with lyrics by Hal David and music composed by Burt Bacharach was a popular 1965 song that reached number 7 on the US Hot 100 charts in a matter of months.
Disc Jockey Tom Clay of KGBS in Los Angeles, California, created the single “What the World Needs Now is Love,” a song that begins with a man asking a young boy to define such words as bigotry, segregation, and hatred (to which the boy says he doesn’t know); he says that prejudice is “when someone’s sick”. Following that is a soundbite of a drill sergeant leading a platoon into training, along with gunfire sound effects, after which are snippets of the two songs – both as recorded by The Blackberries, a session recording group. Interspersed are excerpts of speeches by John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, the eulogy after Robert’s assassination by Ted Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. and soundbites of news coverage of each one’s assassination. The ending of the song is a reprise of the introduction.
Then, as now the message “What the World Needs Now is Love,’ continues to be played, remembered and talked about while in the background, Hatred, gunfire, terrorism, prejudice, violence, racial bigotry, and ill will continues in the world in which we live.
The world does need love and it needs love now. We can sing about it, talk about, remember and long for it, but the truth is that love has to be actively demonstrated on an individual basis.
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. The love that God demonstrated is a sacrificial love, an unconditional and forgiving love. It is the love that has to be visible in our lives if it is to be effective. As the saying goes, “action speaks louder than words.”
As we celebrate Valentine’s Day and prepare for it all week, let us remember that we are to love others as God has loved us – sacrificially, unconditionally and with forgiveness. What the world needs now is that kind of love.
In His Love,
Charles
