The Beach Boys put out this terrible song last year, “That’s why God made the radio.” It sounds like the Beach Boys: wave, tunes, summer. But it’s just a bunch of sappy nostalgia. And I love, LOVE, the Beach Boys. But their best stuff emerged from lived experience. Once they lost that, they were always trying to get back, so you get lame stuff like “Kokomo” and “That’s why God made the radio.” Horrible songs.
Nostalgia. You’ve got to be careful with that. I’m close to thinking it’s either useless or a straight up killer. In nostalgia you either end up painting everything rosy (and it was never that; life is red, black, yellow, green, but never some bland shade of pink) or you end up killing the present altogether. You loose the taste for strong colors (the reds and greens) and you only have the appetite for some watered down pink wine cooler of life. Spit that junk out of your mouth.
Today. And sometimes it burns. Sometimes the sun of today is too bright to look at directly. Sometimes the taste of today seems too strong. But you’re better off being a wooden boy, like Pinocchio, than wandering off to fantasyland and turning into a donkey.
You are made in the Image of God. You are strong and resilient.
You may feel worn out and weak. But you cannot say no to what God himself has said yes to. And he has said yes to you, Today, in his Son Jesus Christ. Is Christ alive Today? So then also you live Today. He is your hope. And when Today kills you (and someday it will either kill you figuratively or literally), then He is your hope that you will live again and call that day, “Today.”
We long for the past, but it is out of reach. We are afraid of the future, but it never comes. There is only and always Today, right now. Today is the limit of humanity. God alone can reach into the past and stretch his hand to the future. We? We are confined to Today. But, like the sinners we are, we hate limits and restrictions.
So, we reach out, get restless, and move away from Today. But, Today is as close as we get to The Garden of Eden. Here is where we live and love. Outside of Today, there is only death. Man cannot live in the strange lands of the past and future. That is thin air. We can’t breath there.
Put down that wine cooler. Have some scotch.
Tom+