Paul Revere and The Raiders: "Kicks"

This song soared up the charts in the spring of 1967. It's about the danger of seeking thrills for thrills' sake. As the song says, they seem to keep getting harder to find.

Listen to the song here.

The Bible has much to say about overdoing pleasure. One bad effect is that intoxicants and a full belly cause one to forget God. As he said to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 29:6 (Bible in Basic English), "You have had no bread, or wine, or strong drink: so that you might see that I am the Lord your God." Sadly, they were slow learners.

Getting drunk also causes a person to lose their judgement. One monarch in 1 Kings 16:8-10 (BBE) learned that lesson the hard way. "In the twenty-sixth year that Asa was king of Judah, Elah, the son of Baasha, became king of Israel in Tirzah, and he was king for two years. And his servant Zimri, captain of half his war-carriages, made secret designs against him: now he was in Tirzah, drinking hard in the house of Arza, controller of the king's house in Tirzah. And Zimri went in and made an attack on him and put him to death, in the twenty-seventh year that Asa was king of Judah, and made himself king in his place."

And Paul points out that drinking to excess is no way for a Christian to act. Ephesians 5:18 (BBE) admonishes, "And do not take overmuch wine by which one may be overcome, but be full of the Spirit;"

Solomon also reminds us in Proverbs 20:1 (BBE) that, "Wine makes men foolish, and strong drink makes men come to blows; and whoever comes into error through these is not wise."

May you remain sober and watchful for Christ's coming. If that hasn't happened by Saturday, I'll hopefully post about the danger of rumors.

T.V. MANIA.

Would today's average North American boy become excited about his family purchasing a black-and-white television? Unless he had little in the way of amusements, probably not. It was a different story back in 1967. Children never dreamed of having high-tech marvels as computers, electronic games, and cell phones. If we were fortunate, our parents bought us tinny-sounding transistor radios.

In Deliverance from Jericho (Six Years in a Blind School), I wrote about how my dad's purchase of a new set excited me. It kept me feeling that way for weeks during that summer.

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Our old television died that summer. Dad decided to replace it with a new set. We had owned that television for over eleven years and repairs were costing us serious money. I felt privileged that Dad let me help choose a new television. Knowing nothing about prices, I kept picking the finest-looking and largest ones. Dad finally settled on a set with the words MONITOR 300 printed below the controls.

The new set was a pleasure to watch. The knobs from the old television had been lost and the channel selector required a pair of pliers. The new set displayed no vertical lines which marred black and white broadcasts. The brightness of its picture, compared to our old television, astonished me.

Drawing televisions and cutting pictures out of catalogues kept me busy too. This mania refused to release its hold on me. "If only I could have my own set," I wished repeatedly. I felt extremely eager to try an experiment. What would happen, I wondered, if a television was turned upside down. Would the picture stay the right way up? Naturally, Mom and Dad wouldn't let me perform that test with such a big-ticket item. I would have to wait until I became an adult to find out.

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Deliverance from Jericho contains many more vignettes of what life was like in that government-run institution. These range from poignant experiences of homesickness to hilarious incidents of mischief. Click here to read more about this compelling story. You may also e-mail me directly if the comment form doesn't work.

By the way, when I did turn a T.V. upside down, the picture stayed upside down too.