Neil Diamond: "Brooklyn Roads"

I identify with this autobiographical song. Like Neil, I was a daydreamer. My fantasies kept away the misery of being in a residential school five hundred miles from home.

Check the song out here:

I also identified with the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt, though I wasn't overworked and beaten. I was far from the land I loved.

And just as God heard my tearful prayers, he heard the agonized cries of Jacob's descendents. As Exodus 3:9 (Bible in Basic English) reads, "For now, truly, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the cruel behaviour of the Egyptians to them."

The Israelites also were deported to Babylon for seventy years. As they sang in Psalms 137:1 and 2 (BBE), "By the rivers of Babylon we were seated, weeping at the memory of Zion, Hanging our instruments of music on the trees by the waterside."

And as I finally left that residential school six years later, the Israelites returned home. Daniel 9:1 and 2 (BBE) explains, "In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the seed of the Medes, who was made king over the kingdom of the Chaldaeans; In the first year of his rule, I, Daniel, saw clearly from the books the number of years given by the word of the Lord to the prophet Jeremiah, in which the making waste of Jerusalem was to be complete, that is, seventy years."

Even so, we Christians await our inheritance of the good things God promised to his people. That's why Ephesians 2:19-21 (BBE) is such good news for us. "So then you are no longer as those who have no part or place in the kingdom of God, but you are numbered among the saints, and of the family of God, Resting on the base of the Apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief keystone, In whom all the building, rightly joined together, comes to be a holy house of God in the Lord;"

If our hoped-for saviour hasn't returned by Thursday, I expect to post about precious wisdom.

Saturday Song: Badfinger, "It's Over"

I'm certain that any child would say that summer holidays are the best. For two whole months, there's no getting up early and going to school. Families usually plan their vacations for July or August since their children are out of school. And judging from all of the folks I know, the summer is when great family memories are made.

The British band, Badfinger, recorded a song about returning home. It resonates with me since I was sent to a residential school for blind and deaf children for six lonely years. Leaving that sterile institution for the freedom of summer vacation each June meant so much to me.

Hear Badfinger's song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mezhl2erFbc

A day will come when our enforced stay on this planet will be over. For many of us, our exit will be through the door of death. And unlike the folks who aren't believers in Christ, we don't fear it. Paul wrote in Philippians 1:21 (BBE) that, "For to me life is Christ and death is profit."

Neither was Peter afraid of death. He wrote in 2 Peter 1:14 (BBE), regarding his decease, "For I am conscious that in a short time I will have to put off this tent of flesh, as our Lord Jesus Christ has made clear to me." He referred to what Christ told him after he rose from the dead.

But there are some of us who will be privileged to see Christ return in our own lifetime. Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17  (BBE), "For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are still living at the coming of the Lord, will not go before those who are sleeping. Because the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a word of authority, with the voice of the chief angel, with the sound of a horn: and the dead in Christ will come to life first; Then we who are still living will be taken up together with them into the clouds to see the Lord in the air: and so will we be for ever with the Lord."

Either way, we are assured of paradise. As Jesus told his disciples in John 14:2 (BBE), "In my Father's house are rooms enough; if it was not so, would I have said that I am going to make ready a place for you?
"

How wonderful then that we are headed for such a blissful rest. Life can be hard but we will receive our reward when we go to our eternal home.

On Monday, I'll tackle the subject of a startling fact I learned from an American preacher currently living in Zambia.

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.