Tuesday's Musical Notes - "Anticipation" (Carly Simon)

Welcome to... wait for it...Tuesday's Musical Notes!!!  It's the first Tuesday of April or as we have come to know it at the Notes..,.Turnaround Tuesday!  It's the day where we reimagine a Tuesday Musical Note of the past that has never made it's way into the blogosphere...only a few folk's email boxes.  Are you ready?  Is the tension building?  Do I hear timpani crescendoing?  Que the flashback or more appropriately the turnaround music and let's zoom back to March of 2011 with a look at a...wait for it ... song.

Late '70s and 80's Heinz Ketchup commercial

 

A generation of people grew up knowing who Carly Simon was because of this commercial.  "Anticipation" wound up being Heinz Ketchup's theme song for over a decade in the 70's and early 80's.  "It's keeping me waaaiiiiittttiiiinnnnggg.  It's slow good!"

 

Perhaps you  remember the song "Anticipation" before it was a ketchup commercial.  It went to number 3 on the charts and was the title track for Carly Simon's 2nd album.  What you may not know is that she wrote the hit while waiting on a date with another 70's superstar Cat Stevens ("Peace Train", "Morning Has Broken").  The song speaks about the stress or anxiety around the process of waiting. 

"Anticipation" the title track from the 1971 album by Carly Simon

   
Regardless of what kind of ketchup you like, it never seems to come out quickly enough.  Are you a tapper or do you use a knife or fork handle to make it come out quicker,do you just wait or do you resolve to only buy squeezable ketchup in the future?  We live in such a society of instant gratification, squeezable ketchup, impulse purchasing and viral video that we sometimes miss one of the most important principles for us to learn.....patience.  

The history of man is replete with example after example of those who waited for good things to happen in their lives.  The invention of the light bulb is one such example. It is a story that spans nearly 3 decades as Thomas Alva Edison and many others figured out..."a thousand ways how not to make a light bulb".  You can read more of the story here: The History of the Invention of the Lightbulb from Ideafinder.com 

The chronicle of man that is included in the Bible is filled with those who had to master the practice of patience.  Abraham was 100 years old before he had the child God had promised.  Joseph was a heralded son, then slave, then exalted, then a prisoner, and once again rose to being the 2nd in command of a nation.  His story can be found beginning in Genesis 37 New International Version of the Bible and The Message Paraphrase of the Bible Parallel.  There is an entire book of the Bible dedicated to displaying an example of patience.  It is the book of Job.  A man named Simeon was waiting in anticipation of the birth of Jesus in Luke 2 New International Version/The Message Parallel.  God continues to be patient in anticipation of people choosing to believe that He sent Jesus to be the ultimate sacrifice for the wrong doing in which we are involved.

 

Maybe you have heard that God answers our prayers in 3 ways, yes, no, or wait.  While we may not always like the "no" answer, it seems that the hardest answer for us to endure is when God's reply is for us to  wait.  Our sound byte, 140 character or less culture finds us demanding that we get our results now.  That just isn't how God works sometimes.  Remember, He is the maker of time itself.  He can do as He pleases when he pleases.  Our role is to worship and serve in the capacity to which He has led us. Regardless of the answer to our prayers.   Let me pose a couple of questions for us all to ponder.  How long will God need to be patient for you to believe in Jesus?  What "work" is God waiting in anticipation for you to do. How good are the prospects that your day has been "outwardly" focused instead of "inwardly"?  How long will you put off that divine appointment of telling the Gospel to the one that God has prepared for you to tell?   Let's hope and pray that today we aren't keeping  God singing...wait for it... "Anticipation.....is making me wait....it's keeping me waiting".



"Faithful" by Chris Tomlin from the 2010 album And If Our God Is For Us 

'Til Tuesday,


 

Serving Him by serving you,

Randy W. Cross