Good Tuesday to ya friend! Welcome to today! It's time for Tuesday's Musical Notes!!! This is THE blog on the web that discusses the music you love in a context that perhaps you've never considered. The Notes comes to you every Tuesday bringing joy, good cheer, and hopefully thought-provoking commentary with themes derived from favorite songs of all genres and decades.
Why Tuesday? I'm glad you asked. Before becoming your intrepid blogger, I was a retail store manager for 14 years. (Huge thank you to anyone who shopped at any of those 8 locations, 2 companies) In that environment, I was always intimately involved in the music areas of the stores I managed. At that time, music and movie releases typically came out on Tuesday. It was always the highlight of the week as our incredible teams put out the newest releases. It seemed that something worth getting excited about always arrived on Tuesdays!! Hence, our love for Tuesdays and the reason Tuesday is the day of the week for The Notes!!! And that was the rest of the story...
Happy belated Earth Day! That's right, April 22nd was Earth Day. I confess that we didn't plant a tree or celebrate in any way. Perhaps we were too busy trying to hail a...
Joni Mitchell was the darling of the folk music scene of the 70s. With unique vocals and introspective lyrics, she paved the way for future female musicians. Today's feature song is a prime example of her particular blend of insightful words put to a fun musical score.
"Big Yellow Taxi" peaked at #67 upon its initial release in 1970, but a live version from 1974 went as high as #24 on charts in the United States. Written to bring attention to growing environmental concerns, "Big Yellow Taxi" was written on Mitchell's first trip to the Hawaiin islands. She saw the beautiful mountains and lush greenery serve as a backdrop for the parking lots and buildings in the foreground and was saddened by it. It joined the ranks of protest songs by predominantly Folk Music artists as it brought attention to the industrial development of the earth. "Big Yellow Taxi"'s music always seemed too upbeat to me for it to be a protest song. Maybe that is one of the ironies Mitchell was attempting to achieve.
Many times in the Genesis account of creation, the Bible says that God saw the things He was creating as good. The earth joins this cadre of good things in day three of the beginning of time as we know it. In verse 1 of Genesis, the Bible states that the earth was formless. On day 3 we find that God had created the atmosphere for that formless shape to be the planet we know. God caused the water and land to separate and spoke greenery into its budding existence. Please remember, however, that the Earth of the creation narrative would later be destroyed by the flood of Noah's time. Tuesday's Musical Notes - "Rock the Boat" Given this fact, it would be safe to assume that the perfection of the Earth at the time of creation only existed until Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command, thus introducing decay and death into creation.
Mankind was given the responsibility to utilize the resources of the earth in the Garden of Eden. That became a much more difficult job after the flood and seemed to pass by the wayside as industrialization came into the forefront of man's existence. Warning cries about the misuse of the earth have been going on since that time but were amplified during the protest times of the 60s and 70s. Today, we continue to hear earth-ending scenarios as well-intentioned folks attempt to undo past mistakes. The direst of these have come and gone with time. "Environmentalist “Doom-and-Gloom” Predictions Haven’t Come True" by Ken Ham, April 19, 2019 answersingenesis.org
Since the time of the environmental protest being born, we have heard a clarion call for responsibility. We have also seen the politicization that comes with the funding of efforts to fulfill that obligation. There is, however, the opportunity for the good thing of "earth responsibility" to become the bad thing of idol worship.
Jesus said in Matthew 22: 37-40 "Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’ These two commands are pegs; everything in God’s Law and the Prophets hangs from them." (The Message).
Notice that loving the earth is not a part of this equation. We are to love God first, then love everyone else. The outpouring of our love for God and mankind will result in the earth being taken care of in the manner which God expects.
There are those who would turn our earth into a god. The Bible calls this idolatry and commands us to not do it. The first commandment given is to have no other gods, only the God. Anything else that gets in the way of our relationship with God, including the good thing of taking care of the earth, is disobedience.
Please understand that Tuesday's Musical Notes is not being hypocritical of those who want to see the planet in which we live continue to exist in the best way it can. We do understand, however, that there are those who would accomplish this at the exclusion of the One who created the whole thing, to begin with.
There is coming a time dear friend in your life where you will have to make a choice and that choice will not be about whether to recycle or not. It WILL be about whether or not you accept God's leadership on your life and make Him the prime object of everything. Holy Spirit is calling you right now to facilitate that exchange. Love God, the Father by accepting the sacrifice that Jesus, the Son made on your behalf. God will not continue to call you forever. Don't wait. You don't know what you could have 'til its gone...
'Til Tuesday,
Serving HIM by serving You,
randy
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