Compact Disc | Wayfarer

Woe to me that I dwell in Meshek,
that I live among the tents of Kedar!
Psalm 120:5 (NIV)

When I was a kid, our family of six made regular road trips to northwest Iowa to visit my grandparents, and each year we made our annual vacation trek in the ol’ Mercury station wagon (complete with faux wood paneling). I can remember music always being a big part of the journey. In those days, the in dash eight-track cassette player boomed the songs of Simon and Garfunkel and the Carpenters from those tapes that were about the size of a pop tart twin-pack. By my teen years, the tapes had gotten smaller and the music on those family road trips had switched to southern rock. By my college years, the Compact Disc had become the rage and the regular five hour road trip to and from school found me listening to a young Irish band called U2. Now, when I go on a business trip, I have my entire music library on a phone that is a fraction of the size of those old eight track tapes. I still make sure I have a good mix of music on a playlist ready for any trip.

Music for the journey is as old as mankind. The liner notes in the introduction of today’s psalm identifies it as a “song of ascents.” In ancient Jewish tradition, the center of worship was in Jerusalem on the temple mount. When people made a pilgrimage there, the songs of ascent were their music mix to sing along the way. The songs were intended to prepare their hearts to ascend to the temple and worship.

The songwriter identifies himself as living far from Jerusalem among foreign people. He is out of sorts and singing the blues. It struck a chord with me this morning as I sit in a hotel room far from home and prepare for a three hour road trip. There is a melancholy that sets in when your heart longs for home far away.

But, I’ve got my music with me and that is always a good thing.

Digitally Remastered. — Image via Wikipedia

“You were afraid, remember, of the fire and wouldn’t climb the mountain. He said:….” Deuteronomy 5:5 (MSG)

When a music group becomes very popular they eventually repackage their most popular songs in a “Greatest Hits” CD. A popular movie will eventually be re-released again and again as a Directors Cut, an Anniversary Edition, or an Unrated version. What many people don’t realize about the book of Deuteronomy is that it’s basically an Anniversary Edition of what’s already been told in Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. Deuteronomy is a “second reading” or “retelling.” You’ll notice in today’s chapter that Moses says, “remember when you were afraid” and then recounts the events of Exodus and the ten commandments.

A few years ago I was meeting with some bloggers and happened to complain that I felt that I was running out of things to say on my professional blog.

“Then say them again,” one wise old blogger said to me matter-of-factly. “Do children hear their parents the first time, or do parents have to repeat themselves over and over before it sinks in?”

Sage advice. No matter how old we get, we are all still children. We need to hear the same truths over and over again, packaged in different ways and spoken by different voices. God knew that the ten commandments would not sink in on the first reading. Truth is not a one and done enterprise. We need to “remember.” We need to pick up the greatest hits version, then the bootleg series and then we’ll want to listen to the remastered copy.

God is not finished with me. I will never be finished with His Message. I will continue to be a wayfarer trekking through its Truths again and again and again until the journey’s end.