Tuesday's Musical Notes - "Three Little Birds" (Bob Marley and The Wailers)

Welcome to Tuesday mon!!!  It is as hot as the Caribbean in our neck of the woods and the days don't seem to be gettin' any cooler soon!  To celebrate the summer, today's Tuesday's Musical Notes chose feature a genre' of music that always causes thoughts of summer, sand, beaches, breezes, sailboats...you get the picture.  If you have ever traveled to Florida or anywhere along the gulf coast it is likely that you have heard the sound of steel drums, or an easy guitar rhythm being plucked out with hand drums as its accompaniment.  Welcome to the beat of Reggae.  

Fused from Jazz, Blues and a local dance groove and hymn alternative called Mento, Reggae is associated with the area surrounding the Caribbean, especially Jamaica.  With its thick bass guitar and rhythm guitar on the offbeat, Reggae became popular in the 60's and flourished as an alternative sound during the 70's and 80's.  It's most popular artist is Bob Marley and his band the Wailers.

"Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley and The Wailers from the 1977 album Exodus

Bob Marley's influences were many.  The music of Jamaica helped to inspire the birth of Reggae as a musical genre.  The easy going lifestyle of that tropical land also participated in the song writing of Marley.  Marley was a practicing Rastafarian, a religion that believes in a Triune God, as well as Jesus, while equating a former emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 - 1974 to Jesus in his second advent.  It is a religion based in the Abrahamic story of the Bible, but adds so much more to the Bible that it could never be equated with Judaism.  Add to this the "spiritual" use of cannabis and it is easy to see why mainstream music consumers were sometimes hesitant to embrace the music of The Wailers.

 

While "Three Little Birds" never charted in the US, (Marley and The Wailers highest charting single, "Roots, Rock and Reggae" went to #51 in 1976), Bob Marley's ode to a stress free life made it all the way to #17 in the United Kingdom.  The single was released three years after its album, Exodus, which did break into the US Billboard album charts, peaking at #20.  The mantra of the song echoes an overwhelming theme throughout the Bible, the fact that God doesn't want us being distracted by worry. 

The Bible is consistent in its approach to worry.  God told Joshua to not worry about the larger armies the Israelites would face as they entered the Promised Land (Joshua 11:5-9 The Message Paraphrase). (Personal note:  If you want to see where the ACTUAL boundaries of Israel should be, check out God's description in this article:  Boundaries Of The Promised Land - Different Spirit differentspirit.org). Boaz, as her kinsman redeemer, told Ruth to not worry about anything with regards to her gathering food on his land: Ruth 2-3 The Message.  The story of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is one that would be completely different if Mary had worried about her situation.  To have an unwed pregnancy in that culture was punishable by being stoned to death.  Mary had much to fear, but due to the angelic promises she received, the Bible says she took all of those things and "pondered" them.  (Matthew 1:18-19 The Message,  Luke 1:26-56 The Message).  In the Sermon On The Mount, Jesus declared that we need not worry due to God's intense love for us.  Matthew 5-7 The Message.  If Jesus, one of the persons of the Godhead, tells us we should not worry, then our response should be...

There is much in our world that could be cause for concern, but worry?  Nope!  In fact, as I get older, I am attempting to develop an adage that served a very dear aunt of mine, Aunt Bee (yep, like Andy Griffith, her real name was Vera, don't know where the Bee came from). She never worried about anything.  She STUDIED on it.  Time was a precious commodity to Aunt Bee, after all she had to have everything done so she could watch rasslin' (wrestling, kind of like the WWE) on Saturdays.  She contemplated and applied the Biblical construct of pondering over those things she deemed worthy of her time.  Her positive attitude towards her concerns made an incredible impact on my life and putting this practice in place has served well when the enemy has tried to distract me with the negative emotion of "worry". Besides,  why waste the time when the Creator God has told us that He's got this...and of course there are the three little birds saying:

"Don't worry about a thing, cause every little thing gonna be alright..." 

"Don't Worry" from Transform, the 2000 album by Rebecca St. James 

   

'Til Tuesday,

Serving HIM by serving you,

Randy