Yes, Yes, I know. You're already bobbin' your noggin' ready to see the video. But if you allow the monologue, I promise you'll get more than what you paid for from the video....
Welcome to Tuesday and Tuesday's Musical Notes! We're your corner of the internetosphere set aside to talk about entertainment and music in general! It is our little paradise where all genres of music are appreciated and all artists are welcome! It is a retreat from the ordinary and a place where you can relax and just enjoy the nuances of the musical rhythms and trivia and perhaps get to know a little bit more about yourself in the process. 
So pull up a chair and a sweet tea or soda and allow the soothing tones of Notesland's musical ambiance to permeate every sinew of your being. You never know where you might wind up. Come on! There's not much time left to wait...
So pull up a chair and a sweet tea or soda and allow the soothing tones of Notesland's musical ambiance to permeate every sinew of your being. You never know where you might wind up. Come on! There's not much time left to wait...
Did it surprise you to see the first link? Tom Cochrane released "Life Is A Highway" from his second solo (his first since 1974's Hang On To Your Resistance) outing after leaving the band Red Rider (https://tuesdaysmusicalnotes.blogspot.com/2014/03/tuesdays-musical-notes-lunatic-fringe.html). "Life Is A Highway" is Cochrane's only charting single on Billboard's Hot 100 peaking at #6. Although it did manage to go all the way to #1 in Cochrane's home country of Canada and stayed there for 2 weeks.
Cochrane has said that he had been mulling the song around since the 80s but never quite got it exactly how he wanted it. While it was on the backburner the original title was "Love Is A Highway" and the song failed to get much further than a demo. (The demo version is available on the 25th-anniversary version of Mad Mad World listed under its original title) Cochrane picked the song back up after a trip to Eastern Africa with WorldVision. He needed a palette cleanser from the scenes of malnutrition and poor living conditions. Encouraged by guitarist John Webster, Cochrane finished the song and recorded many of the vocals in his home studio.
The song has been covered several times since Cochrane's original was released. Country artist Chris LeDoux covered "Life Is A Highway" for his 1998 One Road Man album and released it as a single and music video that same year. It peaked at #64 on Billboard's Hot Country Songs Chart.
Enter a fast, shiny, loud, candy-apple red race car. Pixar films released the animated hit Cars on June 9, 2006. As a part of the movie's soundtrack, the country band Rascal Flatts covered the Tom Cochrane hit instantly gaining renewed popularity by a whole new generation of car and music enthusiasts. Rascal Flatts' "Life Is A Highway" peaked at #7 on the Hot 100 and soon became associated with the film and its retro/nostalgic look at classic cars and highways of America's past with a backdrop of the drama and goings on in a pseudo-NASCAR race for the Piston Cup. As of June 2016, the song had sold over 3.4 million copies and has been used in video games and Presidential campaigns leaving an indelible impression on the culture and music industry for years and years. You just as well ride it all night long!!!
There is no better book than the Bible to see how the words of today's featured song are so true. Our lives are filled with twists and turns, mountains and valleys, and all kinds of weather but we like so many of the folks in the Bible we tell them we're survivors!!!
The Acts of the Apostles was written by Luke a compatriot of Paul's on many of his highway journeys. It is interesting to note that where the Gospels of Jesus leave off, the book of Acts picks up. Acts propels us with a narrative string that suspends all of Paul, John, and Peter's later letters together and helps them make contextual sense. Essentially Paul travels, preaches to a community, starts a church, and then moves on. As he travels he writes back to the churches to follow up on progress and in many cases encourage them as they navigate their highway. In some of the letters, Paul admonishes the church with the idea of lovingly guiding them to do better than what they are.
We find our travelogue through the Bible on Paul's last journey. It seems that his reputation has grown to a point that in many cities the Jewish population is not favorable to his message and does not want Paul to come. We find Paul leaving from one of those locales (verse 1 describes it as an "uproar") as we open our focal passage for today. It seems Paul's valleys are fast becoming lower and lower as he traverses the byways.
Paul determines to head back to Jerusalem. He stops and engages folks, and things spiral out of control as the Jews stir up the population against Paul. He then moves on along the journey to where we find him today.
Troas, modern-day Turkey, is where we find Paul on a very interesting leg of his highway. After taking nourishment, Paul begins engaging the folks. He intended to only stay for 1 day but as he begins preaching he soon finds that it is evening. He must have wanted to ride that highway all night long! It is now midnight, lanterns had been brought in for light, and the people were packed into the building. One young man, Eutychus (some translations say his name means "Lucky"), had fallen asleep (you're not the first to do it in church!) and fell from his window perch 3 floors to his death. One can imagine that this stops Paul's sermon as he prepares to take action. Paul embraces the young man's body and assures the crowd that Eutychus is still alive. Paul then eats a bit and picks up where he left off on his sermon until about daybreak. Paul and his entourage return to their route to Jerusalem, and the crowd, including Eutychus, disperses, and off down the highway, everyone goes.
No huge fanfare, just a young man's broken body restored. No uproar, just the Gospel message of Jesus preached for nearly 24 hours. Paul stops in Miletus, a Greek colony on the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of modern-day Turkey, where he summons folks from Ephesus to have what will be his final moment with them. The emotional time was spent in prayer and mutual encouragement as Paul was preparing for the curves that lay ahead for him.
You may not have a religious faction attempting to stone you. You may never be in a position to preach an all-night sermon and restore a dead young man to life. But you can be faithful today. Because there's not much time left today. This stretch of your road will have its own set of challenges that you will have to navigate. What you do with those challenges will develop you and testify to those around you what and who your faith is in. Will you tell them your survivor?
'Til Tuesday,
Loving HIM by Loving You
randy
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