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Pastor Glenn McDonald: The Lord of Every Tomorrow

George Fritsma


 

Here’s a pop music pop quiz:

 

What’s the most frequently recorded song of all time, now estimated to have been covered by at least 2,200 different artists?

 

Hint: It also happens to be a song that was literally dreamed up by its composer.

 

In 1965, Paul McCartney awoke one morning with a tune stuck in his head. He presumed he must have heard it somewhere, but for the life of him, he couldn’t identify it. He even made up silly lyrics as a way of singing it to other people, so they could help him nail it down:

 

Scrambled eggs, oh baby how I love your legs. “Do you know this? It’s a good little tune, but I couldn’t have written it, because I dreamt it.”  

 

But everyone he consulted was clueless.

 

After a couple of weeks, McCartney began to believe the song might actually belong to him. “Like a prospector I finally staked my claim. I stuck a little sign on it and said, ‘OK, it’s mine!’”

 

As cultural historian Rick Beyer reports, McCartney conjured up some lyrics and brought the song to the studio. But the other Beatles didn’t know what to do with it. Ringo tried adding drums, and John Lennon pondered an organ background. But it didn’t really sound much like a Beatles song. Up to this point the Fab Four had never released a solo number.

 

That’s when legendary producer George Martin made a decision that changed music history. He brought in a string quartet.

 

The result was Yesterday, a rock song that wasn’t really a rock song, lasts barely two minutes, and by a number of groups has been voted Greatest Song of All Time. 

 

McCartney gently grieves for a time in the past when life was good and love was in full bloom: 

 

Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away.

Now it looks as though they're here to stay.

Oh, I believe in yesterday.


Suddenly I'm not half the man I used to be.

There's a shadow hanging over me.

Oh, yesterday came suddenly.


Why she had to go, I don't know, she wouldn't say.

I said something wrong, now I long for yesterday.


Yesterday love was such an easy game to play.

Now I need a place to hide away.

Oh, I believe in yesterday.

 

Here’s the original McCartney recording: Yesterday (Remastered 2009)


Yesterday may be a great refuge for romantic poets, songwriters, and people who for one reason or another have concluded that high school was about as good as life gets. 

 

But it’s a miserable dwelling place for anyone charged with helping lead a family, a company, or a transforming movement into the future.

 

It’s estimated that at least 80% of America’s congregations have experienced frustration and anger over the past few decades because so many members have yearned for something that can never happen again: Why can’t Eisenhower still be president? That’s when it was easier being the Church. 

 

But that was yesterday. And yesterday is gone. 

 

Our prior history may have featured wonderful things. But as the old saying goes, “When you visit the altars of the past, bring back the fire and not the ashes.”

 

God, meanwhile, is in the business of doing something new:

 

Forget about what’s happened; don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it? There it is! I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands” (Isaiah 43:19, The Message).

 

Radical faith isn’t a vote for yesterday.

 

Instead, it’s putting ourselves in the hands of the God who is the Lord of every tomorrow.

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