Welcome to Tuesday and Tuesday's Musical Notes, your weekly blend of pop music and prophetic musings. This is the place where we remember top tens and lion's dens, chart busters and grape clusters, one hit wonders and the One in charge of thunders. It really is a safe place filled with things to learn about music and maybe, just maybe, a few things about yourself. So let's dive on in and visit on this splendid day of days, as we get ready to ponder His good things and ways. Cue the fog machine and lower the lights, it's time for a flashback...think back a few years... c'mon... that's right...
Three years and two #1 hits define the band Fine Young Cannibals. 1987-1989 saw the band from Birmingham, England with enormous exposure. They supplied 3 songs for the soundtrack and played the house band in the Richard Dreyfus, Danny DeVito 1987 movie, Tin Men. They added 7 more songs to the hits from Tin Men and in 1988 released their 2nd and last studio album, The Raw and the Cooked. It soared up the chart garnering Grammy nods and instant success. The album, on the strength of "She Drives Me Crazy" and today's feature song, (both going to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100) hit the top spot on the Billboard 200 Album chart and help to solidify, at least for the following year, Fine Young Cannibals status as the "IT" band of the late '80s. As with many one or two hit wonders, the flame quickly burned out as lead singer, Roland Gift, became disillusioned about making any more good music due to the pressure of the success of The Raw and the Cooked. Fine Young Cannibals would record only 1 other song after 1989 to fulfill contractual obligations and make for a fuller compilation album. It seemed that the "good thing" they experienced, rapidly declined and had gone the path of so many other bands. The original trio would disband in 1992.
We pose to you the very introspective question of, "what do I consider the good things in my life?" Family, prosperity, notoriety, and great friends can all be good things in one's life, but what would be the results if these good things were not part of the fabric of who you are? Would you feel the pain of missing something? Would there be struggles because these good things weren't there?
Ponder what you would do if the good things in your life were gone. Perhaps this has happened to you as children have left home in search of education, careers, or love. Perhaps you have been separated by a good thing through the death of a loved one. Chances are, the good things in your life have transitioned as you have matured. The good thing of a mom or dad transition to the good thing of a spouse. The good thing of children, one day transitions to the GREAT thing of grandchildren. (sorry, girls...) It seems that good things seem to be fleeting, or at best always in transition. How do we grasp this? Do we never get the opportunity to embrace something and keep it forever?
Let's start with the definition of "good". Our handy, dandy, reference point of dictionary.com posits the word "good" as the following:
1.
morally excellent; virtuous; righteous; pious:
a good man.
2.
satisfactory in quality, quantity, or degree:
a good teacher; good health.
3.
of high quality; excellent.
Realize that even that definition of "good" is oftentimes left up to interpretation and utilization out of context. It seems that there has been a subversion of many things in our society to make what was absolute seem fluid. People's definition of "good" goes all the way from the legalistic, dictatorially defined, to the "if it feels good to you, then just do it" crowds. This happens to be one case where the truth does not reside somewhere in the middle. In fact, the middle of this debate is the definition of mushy.
Let's break this down according to the final authority of all definitions...The Bible:
Each of these instances retell an encounter that Jesus had with a wealthy young man. While each perspective is slightly different, the core of what is taught is exactly the same. They are harmonious in what that explain. It seemed that he had many good things in his life and when he asked the good rabbi, Jesus, for what could possibly be the best thing, Jesus asked him a question..."Why do you call me good?" Jesus follows this up with the ultimate definition of the word..."only God is good...if you want to be good, do what God would do..." (Randy paraphrase and harmony of the Gospel accounts) WOW!!! It seems the ultimate and most authoritative resource we have explains to us that there is no way that we can possibly be good. This bodes another thought provoking question...why bother to try?
As created beings, (yes each of us have been created...remember the Bible is authoritative on this subject matter...read Genesis 1:26-31 NKJV/The Message parallel.) we were made by God
in His image. Go back to the end of the passage. "Then God saw
everything He had made, and indeed it was very good." This means that
in the beginning, when mankind was created, the Creator Himself saw man
as very good. So, what happened?
God created man for relationship, yet God did not His relationship with man to be that of a slave or robot to its master. He desired the relationship of son to Father. This means, that while man was indeed very good at creation, he was also made with the ability to chose obedience or disobedience, something a slave or robot would have never been given. And man chose disobedience. God knew that man would do this from the foundation of the world, hence Jesus was the Lamb that was slain at that time to redeem man's goodness and favor with the Father and restore the creation relationship for those who believe in Him/Jesus. Through Jesus' sacrifice, man is restored to that very good status that he had in the garden.
This past Sunday, folks around the world, some even in situations of extreme fear of persecution, gathered to celebrate the Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. Some of these folks were there out of obligation to a parent or loved one. Others were there to satisfy a curiosity about what the "church thing" was all about. And there were a few who were there to worship a very good thing. They celebrated a tomb that was not able to keep captive its resident. For close to two thousand years, that empty sepulcher has remained a reminder to those who discovered it empty for those who through faith see it empty today, that men can someday be considered once again...good things.
'Til Tuesday,
Serving HIM by serving you,
Randy
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