The Way Things Were

All of us who have snow on the roof top have seen many changes. Let’s see, do you have similar experiences to mine?
I remember when our village in Friesland had only one telephone. It was in the post office, and so expensive to use that people wouldn’t think of using it except for dire emergencies.
Our first two houses as a new immigrant family in Ontario, had no running water, no indoor plumbing, no electricity and no telephone. But the bakeshop where dad worked did have a telephone, but no dial. You dialed phone numbers with a crank. You had to know how many longs and shorts to crank to phone someone, something like Morse code. And everyone on the line knew who was receiving a phone call, and pretty much everyone would know pretty soon what it had been about. You remember: they were party lines. Now we can carry our telephones in our pockets. Mine is old fashioned; I can phone with it, but I can’t read the newspapers on it, or take pictures with it. I am so yesterday.
Then there were our adventures with cars. My father never drove a car in the old country, and nothing is about as much as he knew about cars. Shortly after arriving in Canada in 1951, my dad bought a 15 year old Oldsmobile. It spent a lot of time being dragged around behind other people’s cars, trying to get it started. Once in a while it did run. But now what?
I tell you that we now brag about what nice cars we bought; but those stories are not nearly as much fun as the adventure stories which told of the new immigrants and their cars.
You want to hear about my uncle’s first truck? It was an old Ford V8. It smoked bad, really bad. And most of the smoke for some reason ended up in the cab. It was deadly dangerous to ride in that truck unless you had both windows completely open, regardless of the weather. Did it rain? Keep the windows open. Was there a blizzard? No problem! Keep those windows open!
Then a strange thing happened in our village. Down the street, not far from where we lived, the family would dim their living room lights, and an odd blue light would fill the place. Can you imagine our surprise when we discovered that they had bought a box on which you could see cowboys riding on their horses, shooting away at each other? Little did we know, but TV had arrived. Not in our house, mind you; we were reformed and not about to bring movie pictures into our home and what matters just us much is: we were too poor to buy a TV.
It was about to get worse: one day an article in the newspaper declared that the day was coming when the TV would be getting signals in colour. All you would need to do was spend still more money on an even fancier set, and voila! there you’d be! Living coloured movies in the living room. Others writers nixed this idea. How could it be possible, in your wildest dreams, to send colour through the air, from far away to your house?
Were all these changes good? Well, these kinds of changes we took in stride. I think you could make the case that some of the changes were wonderful, but others, perhaps not so much. Soon our grandchildren will have babies with telephones glued to their ears at birth, one fears.
There were many changes in our church communities, too. Some of them were difficult to swallow, and caused lots of pain. Here it becomes evident that not every change is an improvement.
I want to focus a bit on the singing. What did you listen to on the radio? Do you remember Rosemary Clooney singing “Come on-a My House?” Or Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable?” How about “Rock Around the Clock?” And that the real shocker: “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog?” by a newcomer named Elvis Presley? Some of us enjoyed those kinds of song, others not so much so. I can give you the name of one young fellow who came home to find his younger brothers and sisters listening to this, so he grabbed the radio by the plug, swung it around and it promptly crashed against the wall. There have been many changes in our church community, too. We are constantly singing new songs. No sooner have we learned one, than it is has been replaced with more we don’t know, in styles we don’t care for much. For us, as we age, this can be tough to deal with.
And now I am getting around to what I had in the back of my mind all along. In our churches we sing! Paul wrote about it in Colossians 3: with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. We have no idea what tunes would have been used in that early church. We don’t know the words of their spirituals songs and hymns, either. But we do know that throughout history, there have been many styles of singing, and many thousands of hymns have been written. So we are open to changes there, too, even though the new may clash with our older styles.
I was reminded of this when a week ago I was going through a small bundle of old papers that my dad and mom left. There I found a small piece of paper written in my father’s angular, workman’s hand. At least I think it was dad’s hand. It is in Friesian. Likely he wrote it in war time, out of terrible need, no doubt, having witnessed suffering and death that no humans should ever have to suffer and witness. What he wrote is important; it is a song for singing in the night time of despair and distress. It is a song that gives faith courage to continue into the storms. Here are the words, a versification of Psalm 33, the last part of the Psalm.
The Lord on high looks down from heaven;
he sees all people he has made.
No king is saved by might or army;
a warrior’s horse will not give aid.
Our Lord sees with favour
those who love their Saviour—
keeps his eye on them.
Death’s bonds he will sever,
save their lives forever—
God will save from death.
Our souls wait for the Lord, our keeper;
he is our helps, he is our shield.
Shout loudly, praise the Lord, and trust him
who has our life and future sealed.
God our loving Saviour;
keeps us safe forever.
Holy is his name!
God the Lord is loving,
always, always proving
hope is in the Lord.
Whatever may change, decay, disintegrate or disappear, pray that such faith may be vigorously alive from generation to generation.