Too young to be marked by the ‘flowers and powers’ of the 60s, our young minds got ‘blown away’ by riding Schwinn bikes through any pasture or water, allured by the promise of pan fish over a campfire. Those days we carried transistor radios tuned to AM stations all day long, then we’d turn to Orioles Baseball in the cool of the evening. By the end of “The Summer of Love”, 1967, I was still a ten-year-old centerfielder in pinstripes and stirrups of Heidelberg blue. Today, all this stuff gets termed “vintage” somehow—like a pinot noir.

Back then there was little regard for the Byrds or Woodstock. But, four summer vacations later, the flip of a switch, literally, offered us the new venue of Starview, WRHY on the FM dial. Happily, when it first aired in 1972, its format included a good measure of folk music.

During that same year, Peter Yarrow, of Peter, Paul and Mary fame, would release “Greenwood”, perhaps the most poignant song I had ever heard. The chorus comes from the Gospel of Luke.

“…if we do these things in the greenwood,
What will happen in the dry?”

These are the recorded words of Christ in Luke 23:31. Nowhere else in Scripture is there another reference to it. Yet here I believe God, with His most serious Face, is still speaking to us today. “…As His Message was being rejected when He was physically present, how much more it would be rejected in the coming years.” (NIV commentary).

Until Today, within this dear season of Lent, our focus on the Lord’s devotion to us has never been more vital to me. For I know the women along the Via Dolorosa (sorrowful way) were supposed to be weeping for us, as the Lord was sure of His appointment with His final work on the cross. These days, current events remind me of how needful our world is.

“It’s you and me and we must make the choice now, and not destroy the life we’re living for…” (Yarrow, Peter. “Greenwood”)

May we be ever inclined to prayer, that our children’s children grow to understand just how dry the wood is.