2005 No Greater Love

Written in 2005 by Mark Fielding Darden Recorded by Mfd and Chris Kisgen at Blue Creek Valley Farm studio, in Oxford NC.

I found this among my other songs and had almost overlooked it. At that point, the song was almost six minutes long, which is way too long. I was able to edit it, in my opinion, without destroying the flow and lyric content.

Very moving song about how sacrifice of self plays such an important role in our lives. Undoing the desire to “please me” is such a hard thing to do, much less actually choosing to die so that others may live. We were not born as givers. We were born as takers. Only love can reverse that.

The older I get, the more I realize that love is not a 50-50 proposition. For love to actually work and become real, it must be a 100-100 effort on the participants. And in some cases, it must be a 100-0 effort. You give one hundred percent not knowing if you’ll get even one percent back… or none at all. In the case of Jesus, he knew from the moment he was born what his destiny would be.

Can you imagine knowing your entire life that you would be tortured to death by a certain age? And that the meaning of that death would save billions of souls for an eternity? Talk about stress. Think about the love it took for him to do that for us… for you, for me.

And that's why I love the man called Jesus.

Mfd: vocals, guitar, song, video
Chris Kisgen: vocals, guitars, bass