Posted April 7, 2006
In the lyrics of a song, the writer verbalized humanity's great conundrum. We want to live in peace. But we just don't know how. We don't even agree how 'peace' should be defined.
Titled the Merry Little Minuet, it came straight from the "Hungry i" café in San Francisco, a "mecca" of folk music in the late 1950's. Performed by the Kingston Trio, it was song-writer Sheldon Harnick's tribute to the troubles and tensions of the world a half century past:
They're rioting in Africa, they're starving in Spain,
There's hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain
This whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like anybody very much
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For Man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we can be certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off…and we will all be blown away
They're rioting in Africa, There's strife in Iran
What Nature doesn't do to us will be done by our Fellow Man
Update those lines for 2006! Just change a few of the 'who-hates-who' entities. Then add enough verses to enable more peoples, clans and nations—and the non-ethnically-profiled—the opportunity to ridicule, hate or harm whoever they don't like very much.
Iran and Africa will still be in the new lyrics. And we can add Islamic radicals and the Middle East in general. France seems obsessed with hating itself at the moment, as do the new factions of the former Yugoslavia. Thanks to 21st century terrorism, many more potentially fickle fingers are now on the nuclear trigger.
In the lyrics of his song, Harnick verbalized humanity's great conundrum. We want to live in peace. But we just don't know how. We don't even agree how 'peace' should be defined.
There is a reason why we don't 'all just get along.' The great lyrical team of antiquity, Isaiah and Jeremiah, wrote to the same puzzle of human peace vs. troubles and tensions:
O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself,
It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.
Their feet run to evil
And they make haste to shed innocent blood;
Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
Wasting and destruction are in their paths.
The way of peace they have not known,
And there is no justice in their ways;
They have made themselves crooked paths;
Whoever takes that way shall not know peace. (Jeremiah 10:23, Isaiah 59:7-8)
While Harnick's satirical lyrics were sadly cynical, the poetry of Isaiah and Jeremiah was actually inspired—make that thankfully inspired. If there were no hope for the future, we people on earth would certainly be a tragic troop of Adam and Eve's grandchildren.
But there is hope! The Great One who in inspired the works of Isaiah and Jeremiah reveals that hope. Christ came the first time so long ago to live the perfect life of peace and die for all of our un-peaceful sins as the ultimate Passover sacrifice—the annual commemoration of which is but a week away.
Then He left mankind to his own devices to read or not read Isaiah and Jeremiah, or Peter, Paul and John, or the others who penned the Holy Scriptures. He also left us here on earth with the promise and prophecy that He would come again and bring peace on earth—for real!
Unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given;
And the government will be upon His shoulder.
His name shall be called
Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of His government and peace
There shall be no end… (Isaiah 9:6-7)
It's time, my friends, to shed your troubles and tensions. It's time to leave the "Hungry i" café of yesterday and the sad song of Sheldon Harnick, and go to the "Hungry Heart" café of truth to hear and sing the new songs of what tomorrow will be—a new and wonderful world.
That fantastic future has been carefully planned. For more about how Jesus Christ will make it a reality, request, download or read online your free copies of our booklets: God's Holy Day Plan: Hope For All Mankind and What Is Your Destiny?
