Hello, thank you for joining me today for Give Him 15.

The title of our post today is The Day the Music Died.

Psalm 137, verses 1, 2, and 3, by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows

in the midst of it, we hung our harps. For there our captors demanded of us songs, and our tormentors

mirth or laughter, saying, sing us one of the songs of

Zion.

A popular song in the 70s, American Pie, included the phrase, the day the music died.

It has always reminded me of this song.

Though Don McLean's song was about a different time, place, and reason,

it too was about the nostalgia that comes with closing a chapter in time.

Ethan Reese says the song describes the end of, quote,

a chapter that was good, youthful, and innocent.

For McLean, it was lost when he discovered that his favorite musicians, Buddy Holly,

Richie Valens, and JP, the big bopper Richardson, had died in a plane crash.

The day the music died.

And for America, he says, it came in the song.

It came when the utopia of the 1950s was exposed as a veneer, giving way to the more socially conscious but turbulent 1960s, end quote.

McLean was more prophetic than he knew. Innocence was indeed lost in the turbulent

60s and beyond. America the Beautiful still describes us on the outside. Internally, however,

we are unattractive, discordant, ravaged by societal disease and moral decay.

In their desire to be encouragers, many religious leaders refuse to point out the true condition of America.

I get it.

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