Parents, what triggers the treasures in your heart? As a child, my family had an old Wurlitzer JukeBox. We would buy old vinyl 45 records to play in it. Dad had somehow enabled it to play with no coins. We had songs from artists like Sonny & Cher, Elton John, Harry Chapin, John Denver and many others, mostly selected by my mother. We had dozens of records in that thing… most were late 60’s and early 70’s pop music like: “One Tin Soldier (the legend of Billy Jack) by Coven, “Black Water” by the Doobie Brothers, “The Streak” by Ray Stevens, even some Tennessee Rockabilly called “Fastest Truck on Wheels” by a long lost cousin (you can hear it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cgjakEB5KU). One of my sister’s friends loved one song so much she just kept pushing the buttons until that song was the only song the jukebox would play for hours. The songs theme was less than edifying. I think we may have retired that record from the playlist after the incident. Everytime I hear one of those old songs, I am whisked back to the downstairs game room of my childhood home. I can see out the sliding glass door to the aggregate patio, the green grass, pine trees, blackberry vines, the tall grass of the field next door and the steeple of the church behind it. I can smell the wonderful aromas of my mother’s cooking and hear the laughter and sometimes out of tune sing-a-long attempts of friends and cousins as we juke to the tunes emanating from the curved glass old Wullitzer. We wait for the large holiday meal; adults in one room and kids at the “kid’s tables” and we wait a bit more for homemade Orange Crush ice cream. Isn’t it funny how all these treasured memories hidden in my heart are revealed when I hear one of the scores of songs from the old fancy phonograph player?
One of the Biblical musical artists must have known this heart-to-music-to-memory interconnection as he wrote down and played songs that reminded him and his people of their relationship with God. David was said to be a man after God’s own heart, who had a heart to heart attachment with Him. It was so strong and so valuable he didn’t want to lose it. It is said that he used Psalm 119 to teach his son Solomon the Hebrew alphabet and he connected a song to each letter to help him grow in his spiritual life. In one of his Psalms he says, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” Psalm 119:11 (NIV) By the time my kids came along there were all kinds of scripture songs, Veggie Tales, and kid’s hymn sing-a-longs that we played almost non-stop in the mini-van, hoping to hide them in our hearts… They actually helped me remember who I was in Christ as we drove along… well until someone cut me off in traffic, then I needed a song on repentance (Psalm 51 maybe!)… We gotta be hiding God’s Word in our heart, not just for knowledge, but to actually live out the treasure of love and connection with God and other people it teaches. Songs from that old jukebox remind me of who I was in times gone by, but God's Word reminds me who I am right now and who He is making me into.
Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!
