“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord Almighty.
- Malachi 3:6-7a
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
- Hebrews 13:8
But you remain the same,
and your years will never end.
- Psalm 102:27
You will roll them up like a robe;
like a garment they will be changed.
But you remain the same,
and your years will never end.”
- Hebrews 1:12
I am not such a clever one
About the latest fads
I admit I was never one
Adored by local lads
Not that I ever try to be a saint
I’m the type that they classify as quaint
I’m old fashioned
I love the moonlight
I love the old fashioned things
The sound of rain
Upon a window pane
The starry song that April sings
This year’s fancies
Are passing fancies
But sighing sighs holding hands
These my heart understands
I know I’m old fashioned
But I don’t mind it
That’s how I want to be
As long as you agree
To stay old fashioned with me
(bridge)
I’m old fashioned
But I don’t mind it
That’s how I want to be
As long as you agree
To stay old fashioned with me
Oh won’t you stay old fashioned with me
Oh please stay old fashioned with me
- Johnny Mercer, I’m Old Fashioned
This song debuted in 1942 in the movie You Were Never Lovelier. It was recorded by Nan Wynn who dubbed it for Rita Hayworth as Rita and Fred Astaire danced. Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics for the tune composed by Jerome Kern. When the much older Kern first heard the lyrics, he became excited. He called for his wife to come down and hear the lyrics.
The song has been featured in a Woody Allen movie, Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and as the central theme of a ballet of the same name (1983) by Jerome Robbins where the Fred Astaire and Rita Hayworth dance scene from the movie is projected behind the corps de ballet.
Am I old fashioned? Absolutely, but with my parents who wanted time to have been frozen in the late fifties with an ethos that was maybe a century before, or more, I came by my old fashioned attitude easily.
But I have turned off the television to listen to the rain fall on the window pain. To watch the distant lightning and hear the thunder. When I grew up, if there was lightning in the area, there was a high risk of having the television destroyed by lightning hitting the antenna. So, we would quit watching television and listen to the storm.
With cable television, it is rare that lightning could destroy the television, but when I took the opportunity to turn off the television and listen, I was transported to a time 60 years ago.
Maybe that one line in the song captured my memories, but I must remember that God never changes.
The latest fad will be a passing fancy as the song says. Will we ever go back to the way that it was before? I doubt that. There will be new fads that are basically nostalgia from a forgotten time. As one network advertised their summer reruns, “If you did not see them when they first aired, they are new to you.”
And so, sometimes they advertise that the new fad is a return to something older. But far too often, the new guy takes full credit for his “new idea” because no one is still around that remembers it from before.
So, in this world where politicians have to create some kind of legislation that is their legacy – even if it brings pain and suffering to millions – we should all know that God is the only thing that is constant. And we should know that we cannot take anything with us except our love for Jesus. If you have no love for Jesus, then you take nothing at all from this world.
Why do we have to change anything?
Okay, I am writing this blog post and talking about how I miss the old days. In those old days there were no blog sites. There was no internet.
I can remember going to the keypunch room and typing my code onto cards, one line of code per card. Then, I submitted that code and waited a few hours. I used the codename ABEDNEGO. I had learned that when they were busy, they took the stacks of cards in alphabetical order. When I meet Abednego in Heaven, I will have to thank him.
Punch cards, or punch tape, has been used since the 1700s in industrial automation, but as a means to talk to computers, it started in the 1950s. Now we can simply talk and the words appear on the screen.
But in all that development in communicating, when was the last time that you sat across from someone you love and looked directly into their eyes to say things that words cannot express?
Now, since you cannot think back that far… Picture doing that by candlelight, while listening to the raindrops fall. And then you hear the distant sound of thunder as the storm clouds are moving away.
Never mind, that might have been last summer during the big storm and the power went out…
But I remember our son asking us to turn off the power so that we could remember what we had done during a power outage the year before. Crank up the camp lantern, and play card games and board games around the kitchen table. Yes, you can think fondly about such times, even while you are suffering depravations.
Maybe we need to be deprived a little… to remember when we trusted God rather than the “Smart” devices in the house.
Here is I’m Old Fashioned sung by Ella Fitzgerald.
Here is I’m Old Fashioned played by John Coltrane. Two weeks in a row. Why not?
“I’m old fashioned
But I don’t mind it
That’s how I want to be
As long as you agree
To stay old fashioned with me”
- Johnny Mercer, I’m Old Fashioned
Soli Deo Gloria. Only to God be the Glory.
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