Liz has a pile of CDs in her lap and she’s rotating the songs, all our favourites, and we’re driving and Fleetwood Mac’s old classic ‘Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow’ comes on and it’s good, it’s all so very good.
It’s the sort of song that can say a lot at a wedding. In fact, not long after My Bride and I said ‘I do,’ this is the song that screamed from the speakers at the reception hall. Sometime before the end of the evening it was for everyone to dance to (and dance — the minister and his wife and a few hundred others until past midnight — they did.)
But at first the song came with slides of Yours Truly and my growing-up years shown as big as the sky on one wall or another. My hair was long and my bell-bottoms were wide and while I was thin as a rail I had a fat football and a big smirk in one photo, and then in another that awful white turtleneck sweater, and then another with Opa Froese in the vegetable garden, and then another and another and another.
The old photos were all saying one thing to me which is this: who would have ever guessed that after so many tomorrows I would be listening to this Fleetwood Mac song with all these guests and eyes looking up in a sort of ‘This is Your Life’ theme?
And who would have thought that some years later, I’d be driving an old but steady 4×4 in the middle of Africa with that same song now playing not only for my ears, but for those of my three children?
Of course The Good Book warns against thinking too much about tomorrow, lest we put both our physical hearts and our spiritual souls into mortal danger. ‘Don’t worry about tomorrow,’ is how The Saviour put it. ‘Today has enough worries of its own.’ And who is any of us to argue with The Lord?
But then again, he is the maker of all tomorrows, however few or many more will come for any of us. And some days we just need to be reminded about this, that yes, tomorrow truly will come and, whether you like it or not, yesterday indeed is very much gone.
Like today, tomorrow will also come with it’s share of troubles. It’s true. But tomorrow will also come with the sort of promises and surprises that reach out like a good song and say, take my hand, look to me, and don’t stop believing.
So thank you so much, Liz, for choosing this fine musical reminder about it all. You can turn it up now. And so can you, at http://www.whosdatedwho.com/tpx_62249/fleetwood-mac/tpx_4962494