It's Tuesday! Time for The Notes! Let's get started!!!
Welcome to a first here at Tuesday's Musical Notes! It is the first time a band has been featured in back to back weeks! We've researched the annals of Musical Notes history and can not find a band, that's right, not even Chicago, that has been featured in consecutive weeks.
Last week we featured theme song from a popular tv show that was making its exit. That blog referenced that feature band's most successful song to date. And it really fits well to where we are going this week. So, just in case you didn't click on it last week, kick back and get ready for another taste of the band Barenaked Ladies as the regale us with a tale of what happened...
It was the biggest hit from their biggest album. The first single from the indie darling's fourth studio album went to # 1 after debuting on the charts at #3. It climbed to # 2 the week after its debut and then went on to spend, you guessed it, one week at #1.
The music video utilized iconic scenes and props to propel the storyline. A wind-up life-sized singing girl, much akin to Sally Ann Howes' wind up doll in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the General Lee Dodge Charger from The Dukes of Hazzard, and the Ford Gran Torino from Starsky and Hutch all serve as a backdrop for the telling of the story of the week of a relationship of a guy and his girl. The seemingly nonsensical lyrics are filled with iconic pop references that while not insightfully deep, are a lot of fun to give a listen.
Could you encapsulate the past week that you just experienced into 2:54? I suspect you would attempt to be very general, which might border on being nonsensical to anyone else. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' The American Time Use Survey ("Startling Statistics on how we Spend our Time" posted March 4, 2011, by Susan Cullen on nexalearning.com), here is how we spend our time during a week: (Theirs is a daily statistic, we've done the math to provide the weekly statistics for you!)
working and related activities: 61.6 hours
sleep: 54.6 hours
leisure and sports: 18.2 hours
household activities: 7.7 hours
eating and drinking: 7 hours
caring for others: 8.4 hours
other: 10.5 hours
A week has 168 hours in it. Of that, 123.2 are spent working, sleeping, or eating. That means we have 44.8 hours to do the other things on the list. Given this limit on our time, would you agree that those hours become really important? So what do we do with our week? How do we invest/spend limited waking moments?
In the first 4 verses of Genesis 2, we are given the model for work and rest. The Message paraphrase puts it like this:
"Heaven and Earth were finished, down to the last detail. By the seventh day, God had finished his work. On the seventh day, He rested from all his work. God blessed the seventh day. He made it a Holy Day Because on that day he rested from his work, all the creating God had done." (Genesis 2:1-4 New American Standard Version of the Bible/The Message paraphrase of the Bible/King James Version of the Bible parallel)
In Genesis 1 we see the condensed version of all that went on during the week of creation. As we said in previous blogs, everything that God created on the consecutive days were the building blocks for the life of the next day's creation. Ultimately, the very good creation of man came at the conclusion of the first 6 days.
There are those who would say that the "week" mentioned here in Genesis could be any time frame. I question this. God gave Genesis to Moses to write down. Moses, being educated in the courts of Egypt would have had an understanding of weeks, months, and even years. If it had taken God "billions of years" to exact the creation process, I feel strongly that He would have told Moses that very thing. Hello, I'm Randy and I believe in a literal 7 days in Genesis 1 and 2!!!
In our culture, we have a 24-hour news cycle. Some have a 7 day a week work cycle. Others work for 5 days and then take 2 days to fill with pursuits they enjoy or chores at home that need to be done. I wonder if any of these are actually good for our health and well being.
The example given to us by God, you know the One who CREATED us and knows exactly how we function at our peak, is to work for 6 days and rest for 1. Please don't get me wrong, I am not suggesting you go and find a paying gig that requires you to work for 6 days. I am however suggesting that we do not take the time to rest that we should.
Notice the blessings of the 7th day. God said that His creations from the previous 6 were good and very good, yet on the 7th day, the day of no work or no creation, God blessed the day. He spent 6 days getting things done. He enjoyed getting the opportunity to savor the fruits of His labors. Did God need the rest? Absolutely not! Did God take the time to reflect and enjoy and bless his labor? You bet!!!
Why do we work? The quick answer is to provide for our families. Do we ever take the opportunity to celebrate that provision? Do we ever rest and take advantage of what our work has produced? Do we relish the beauty of freshly mowed lawn or flowers that were placed in specific locations in a bed? Do we experience the benefit that our work has provided for us? Too many times I do not.
We must not believe the lie from the enemy that every waking moment must be spent in activity of some sort. Our physical bodies were not created for that, nor were our mental states. We must have a day to reflect and enjoy and yes even bless the work of our own hands. God's created us in His image. Wouldn't logic dictate that He knows how we are to spend One Week?
'Til Tuesday,
Serving HIM by serving You,
randy
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