The opening lines of "Jenny Don't be Hasty" reveal a lassez faire outlook of the writer and musician Paolo Nutini, a twenty something pop artist from Scotland who rose to prominence in his teens to make a name singing covers and his own compositions. He is trying to get an older girl to notice him, where he has no business pleading for her attention. He doesn't care. In his teenage obsession, he says anything to get her to just notice him. JUST NOTICE HIM.

As a songwriter myself, it is relatively easy to capture emotions where none existed in the first penning of a lyric. It's the writer, including me, putting words to paper trying to idly get cogent thoughts permanently etched where they do not belong. Make a rhyme, any rhyme. David Crosby once noted in an interview that drugs drew lyrics from him where disconnected thoughts seemed perfectly aligned and later, sober, he wondered at his own sanity.

I have written, hoarsely emoted, and lazily pronounced things for which I was sorry later. It might work in a song, even a hit, but it does not work on the wet Mondays of a walk on rough cobblestone to work from a thoroughly dissipated Sunday night, as if one were trying to make a weekend last into the wee hours before awakening to harsh reality. We all say things we regret. Words have power, from seduction to violence, not the least of which we direct to God.

We pray, we sing, we say God Bless You, without a thought as to where that person is spriritually. God says to keep our words few. Sometimes I say those three words as a response without the prayer that the phrase was meant to be. Lord, cause me to pause in my persual of words to fill space until I say what YOU would have me whisper, converse, or sing!

Please help us as we speak praise, witness, and teach, that we will fill our minds and hearts with You!