Saturday Song: Blue Cheer, "Summertime Blues"

I was too young to remember the original version of this Eddie Cochran classic but I well remember Blue Cheer's version. That band took the song of teenage frustration about working all summer to a whole new level. I cranked up the volume on my transistor radio whenever I heard this song.

Watch the band perform this song here:

Work has a long history of not being enjoyable or easy. This started when Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Genesis 3:17-19 (BBE) reads, "And to Adam he said, 'Because you gave ear to the voice of your wife and took of the fruit of the tree which I said you were not to take, the earth is cursed on your account; in pain you will get your food from it all your life. Thorns and waste plants will come up, and the plants of the field will be your food; With the hard work of your hands you will get your bread till you go back to the earth from which you were taken: for dust you are and to the dust you will go back.'"

But as I found out when I had my first job as a dish washer at the CNIB cafeteria, getting a paycheck for the work I did felt exhilarating. The job wasn't fun but I did get paid.

Some workers weren't so fortunate. We read in Genesis 33:41(BBE) how Laban kept changing Jacob's employment agreement. God came to his aid, as Jacob said in Genesis 31:38 (BBE), "These twenty years I have been in your house; I was your servant for fourteen years because of your daughters, and for six years I kept your flock, and ten times was my payment changed."

In the end, Jacob came away with more goods and servants than if the Lord hadn't blessed him.

Being forced to slave for others is the worst form of work. As the children of Israel found when the Egyptians made them slaves, all they gained was their daily food and lodging. Then God sent Moses to liberate them but Pharaoh made their work more grueling. As he said in Exodus 5:9 (BBE), "Give the men harder work, and see that they do it; let them not give attention to false words."

Of course physical work isn't the only sort of labour people do. Some assume that they must do enough good deeds to enter heaven. But Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30 (BBE), "Come to me, all you who are troubled and weighted down with care, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke on you and become like me, for I am gentle and without pride, and you will have rest for your souls; For my yoke is good, and the weight I take up is not hard."

How wonderful then that we will have rest, even in this irksome world of wickedness. And our Lord hasn't forgotten us but continually advocates on our behalf in heaven.

On Monday, I'll be posting about the bad old days of dial-up Internet verses how we're now connected automatically. It relates to the way the Holy Spirit is always in us whereas people just had the spirit come upon them occasionally in the Old Testament times.