Think Before You Sing

  It’s finally here! The final countdowns are running. Life can finally get better again. I can finally start to better myself. It is going to be an actually good year. I hear this every year. Yes, it is worse this year because everyone hates 2020. There are plenty of songs we can look at to see this, some of them include bad language. My question is why? Why do we think a different year will make such a difference? We don’t get this excited when a new month is starting. Why not? Why not have this excitement when a new week starts? We love when a New Year starts. We hate when a new week starts. And we let months pass without a second thought. We love New Year’s so much that we use it as a reason to set out to better ourselves. We are going to get in shape or push your brain harder. And what do we all know about these resolutions? Most of them have been stopped before the month has ended and once you get to summer then it is a real achievement to still ha...

December 25 th has come and gone but in a lot of places it is just beginning to look a lot like a winter wonderland.  With that being the case I want to take a quick look at part of the song winter wonderland.   Winter wonderland was written by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith. These lyrics seem to be used by Bing Crosby .  I want to look at who or what is the snowman. The line is sung twice, the first time: In the meadow we can build a snowman, then pretend that he is Parson Brown. And the second time: In the meadow we can build a snowman, And pretend that he’s a circus clown I don’t think there is any debate on what a Circus Clown is but who is Parson Brown? This is a heavily debated topic and you can find all sorts of articles on it. My conclusion has been that Parson Brown was the generic title used for traveling pastors that would tend to small towns. This would include weddings and that is when the line makes sense in contex...

Merry Christmas! I hope that you are able to enjoy Christmas with your family in one way or another. I have started this project as a way to help push people to make their own decisions and because of that I want to encourage you to take some time reading your Bible and thinking about it on your own. I will acknowledge that I have been struggling with what Christmas should really be. I believe we can agree that it is a celebration of Christ’s birth. The issue arises when we look at if it is about giving or receiving. Is it about the Gift of Christ that has been given to us or is it a call to reflect that gift by giving to others. I have suggested looking at Luke 2:1-21 already so I will not put it here but do feel free to take a look at it on your own. Matthew 1:18-25 Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. And her husba...

Earlier this week I posted about Noel and the song The FirstNoel . In there I talked about the use of the word Noel and the idea that I feel like most people don’t stop to think about what it really means and think it is more than it actually is. This idea is kind of the point for this project as a whole but I feel like sometimes we find ourselves thinking that it doesn’t really matter. And to that I want to point out Ecclesiastes 7:1-13 A good name is better than precious ointment,    and the day of death than the day of birth. It is better to go to the house of mourning     than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind,     and the living will lay it to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter,     for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,     but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better for a man to hear the reb...

  I want to talk about the song The First Noel, the great Christmas anthem that we all sing without stopping to think about what the word noel means and if we do know what it means we do not stop to teach it to others. Here is the Definition according to google: Christmas, especially as a refrain in carols and on Christmas cards. So the chorus of the first Noel has the exact same meaning as: Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas Born is the King of Israel There are not necessarily any issues with that statement but I think we often think there is more meaning when we use the work noel instead and that is simply on the case. These issues do not stop there, let’s take a peek at the first verse. The first Noel the angel did say was to certain poor shepherds in fields as they lay; in fields where they lay keeping their sheep, on a cold winter's night that was so deep. So we have some things to look at briefly. First again is the use of Noel. Looking at the firs...