My friend Justin had posted on Facebook this YouTube video of a song that I sang growing up. Here’s the video that he posted: He states on his stutus update that we tend to pass on our prejudices through the … Continue reading
Until this stuff happens to you, it’s kinda hard to grasp, but I recently heard an acoustic version of a song that I listened to hundreds of times in one sitting. Listening to the song 20 years later, the lyrics … Continue reading
When I was younger, I learned a song in church – The Countdown Song.
Somewhere in Outer Space – God has prepared a place – for those who trust Him and obey – Jesus will come again – and though we don’t know when – the countdown’s getting lower every day – 10 and 9, 8 and 7, 6 and 5 and 4 – Call upon the Savior while you may – 3 and 2 coming through the clouds in bright array – the countdown’s getting lower everyday.
I sang that song growing up. I believed that song for a long time. It’s just not true. I mean, God has prepared a place – I believe that – but it is not “somewhere in outer space.” Which if you wrote the song for kids, I guess is kind of a cool idea, but still bad thinking. It makes God to be some random and not planned being that just way out there.
No offense to the person that wrote that song. I’m sure their intent was to really teach some great theology to kids, but I think it does the opposite. My point in writing this is not so much the song itself as much as the question – what other bad ideas are in my mind that I don’t know are bad ideas? I mean, what other songs did I sing as a child that still drive my idea and concept of God and how he works? I can think of good ones, but there’s some bad ones as well.
What songs did you sing as a kid that drives bad thinking?
I recently heard a talk about how suburbanism is basically making our land ugly. It is so ugly that it’s not worth fighting for. We have taken our spaces and just made them functional and they are no longer aesthetically appealing.
They said that in the country, you have nature. In the towns, we have splashes of nature just to give that space a sense of beauty, but that it isn’t working – Nature band-aids he called them.
The past 2 days, I’ve been listening to the Barefoot Natives – a duo from Hawaii – Eric Gilliom and Uncle Willie K. Check out their site. They have videos that you can check out.
Typical of Hawaiian music is this idea of the land speaking to you. There’s a ton of songs that talk about an interaction between you and where you live. I was going to list some of them, but check them out. It won’t take you long to find songs that speak of the beauty of the land. It won’t take you long to find songs that speak of the interaction that you can have with her. I love the personification of the Hawaiian Isles. If you’ve been there and spent any time with her, you’d know.
If you’ve never interacted with the land – I think you’re missing out. It says something about you, and probably more important, she has something beautiful to say to you.
So where ever you – in the Mid-West, in the desert, in suburbia, what is the land saying to you? What song would you write for her? I’d love to hear it. Is it one of abuse? Is it one of beauty?
