jones drove the train

the first record bought with my own money wasn’t a cool one…it was a ktel compilation of novelty songs from the late 50's and early 60's called Looney Tunes that would still find favour among Mad magazine reading 12 year-olds in the 70's. being that i fit the demographic targetted by the marketing strategies employed (there was a silly commercial with bad animation that offered cartoon exerpts of a few of the songs, making them seem far more brilliantly satirical and emotionally satisfying than they actually were) i rushed down to the closest retail store and bought my own copy full price. on it was along came jones- a song of considerable melodrama performed by a group called the coasters... not the craziest song on the record, but perhaps the most spiritually meaningful.

mel·o·dra·ma

1.	a dramatic form that does not observe the laws of cause and effect and that exaggerates emotion and emphasizes plot or action at the expense of characterization.

(huge thanks, as usual, to www.dictionary.com and www.biblegateway.com)

sometimes, in our desire to understand and summarize a lesson in scripture, we can reduce it to the level of melodrama…the depth of God’s desire to redeem his own, the crowned of creation, from an agreed-upon autonomous existence hell-bent on self-destruction can often come off as a simple white-hat versus black-hat cartoon.

and then he grabbed her! (and then?)
he tied her up! (and then?)
he threw her on the railroad track! (and then?)
a train started coming! (and then? and then?)

and then along came jones...

now, describing placing black hats and white hats upon real-life characters caught in a day to day existence on fallen planet earth is trickier than writing a simple plot with simple characters and putting it to music...

nothing is ever simple or tidy.

and yet scripture bears witness to the following through of God’s promises to remain involved. God promises a restoration of all things, and then takes humanity through a series of successive approximations, revealing in holy moments, glimpses of his glory; offering hope for the future of this fallen race in God’s bigger picture.

exodus 19.9-11, 16-20
2 chronicles 5.11-14
isaiah 6.1-8
acts 2.1-6
joel 2.28-32

at the end of his second chapter, the prophet joel describes 'day of the Lord' and in this description we read of an incredible deliverance that is promised to 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.' the UK band delirious reflects upon this to some degree in a song of theirs called God's Romance which has a rather catchy and intriguing chorus:

Everyone here is the kingdom come
Here is the God who saves the day
And we will gladly run into the glorious Son
Singing that Jesus is alive

what i find so engaging about this lyric is the melodramatic, saturday morning superhero phrase: the God who saves the day.

being that we read the phrase 'the day of the Lord' so often in scripture to describe a time when, according to Gospel.com, "God will make his creation whole again and destroy evil," i find the melodrama of the God who saves the day accessible and attractive.

having watched too much tv as a kid, i remember the song along came jones being most poignantly enacted on the old irish rovers tv show…

in it, jones drove the train.

I don't care about economy, I don't care about astronomy
But it sure do bother me to see my loved ones turning into puppets
There's slow, slow train coming up around the bend. (Bob Dylan)