I was uploading a photo to my Instagram story and wanted to find a song that matched its vibe. I browsed endlessly, scrolling up and down and searching for an artist, but I couldn’t find the right one. Just when I was about to give up, I came across a song I am an alien to that I absolutely loved. I enjoyed every part of it: the instrumental, the tone, the beat, and the vocals. It felt like a warm hug — at least that’s how it made me feel. The song has been stuck in my head ever since, almost like an earworm. The song is called “Backburner” by Nicole Zefanya everyone knows her as NIKI, and I’ve loved every fragment of it. Though I do not fully understand the lyrics or relate to them, I simply enjoy the song because it is beautiful as it is.
I didn’t know what a backburner was, so I quickly looked it up on everyone’s favorite answering machine, Google. I found out that backburner is a term usually used in relationship stuff and to be a backburner is to be a person who becomes someone’s only option when all others have been excluded. The person who is only chosen out of desperation. The fallback. The last resort.
I find backburner as an interesting concept. Then I came to my senses that a backburner is someone who will always appreciate another person, who will see them as precious and significant in their life, and who will love them consistently and unconditionally, regardless of reciprocity.
And then it hit me: Has God become our backburner? How often do we turn to Him only after exhausting all other options? How often do we seek Him only when no one else can help?
In the New Testament, The Parable of the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke tells us simply the story of how God has become a backburner for us. Sometimes, we stray from His love and drift away from His affection toward us because we prioritize our desires, we prioritize choosing others over our relationship with Him, which leads us to separate and distance ourselves from Him.
Although we may sometimes consider God as our least desirable option, He does not hold any resentment toward us. Rather than harboring a grudge for how we neglected Him, for how we did not reciprocate His overflowing love, He patiently waits for us to come back. When we do choose Him once more, He welcomes us back with open arms.
We can always make the effort to change how we prioritize him in our lives. Instead of keeping Him just as a backburner, we can choose to make him our top priority, our first choice, our confidant, and the one we reach out to whenever we need somebody to lean on in every season of life.
Because He is not just a fallback, He is the foundation. And He deserves to be first. Not just a backburner.
By Chiles Gloriani
Chiles Roemn Gloriani is a third-year AB Communication student at Saint Paul Seminary Foundation, currently discerning his vocation with the Society of St. Paul. He is the Apostolate Chairman of the Seminarians Council.