It was one of the greatest ever number one songs to grace the charts in the days when the top tune was actually decided by sales of records that amounted to millions worldwide and not hyped by a few backhanders or pledges and a couple of hundred downloads. It drew people to wear flowers in their hair and congregate at music festivals,especially on the west coast of USA ans culminated in the 'summer of love' way back in 1967. I loved the tune and maybe more so because, not into my teens, I could strum along to it on the guitar and knew all the lyrics, though I'd absolutely little idea what they meant! It was sung by a 'one hit wonder' called Scott Mackenzie and it's amazingly long title of 'If you're going to San Francisco (Be sure to wear flowers in your hair) and after it faded from our radios, it took me over thirty years to get my hands on a copy of the track. But more than anything else, it probably dated me as a child of the sixties. And if you fall into that same category, then you're most likely to be a pre metric child as well. And that's where it all gets complicated. You see, its OK if you're under thirty and possibly even forty, but once you get beyond that magic figure (magic, because your life seems to disappear even more quickly), we are all living in a parallel world of metric and imperial. I used to smile as my older relatives talked about how they never could get used to decimal coins and metres and litres and thought it would be a cakewalk, but all these years later I still look for a pound of butter or sugar. And I guess there aren't too many frequenting our drinking establishments, who would say, 'Do you fancy 0.56 litres of beer?' Why, last summer, driving in France, I found the most useful bit of info as we travelled, to be that five miles was equivalent to eight kilometres. So mentally, you find yourself doing constant conversions to see how fast you're travelling and how far you still have to go. It's sort of comforting, almost like translating into your own language, which in a way, I guess it is.
But it just doesn't stop there. When wife is baking, she is constantly bombarding me with questions about converting fluid ounces to grams and similar mathematical problems and when I fill up the car with diesel, it now cost more per litre than it used to cost for a gallon of the stuff - and the car doesn't go any further! Then in the supermarket, you see adverts for the price of meat at so much per kilogram but does anybody really know how heavy a kilo actually is. When you stand on the scales, do you still weigh yourself in stones, pounds or ounces(if you're an insect) or is your mass displayed in kilos. Strangely enough, when dad looked at a cow, he could accurately predict its weight in hundredweights, without ever needing to see a scale reading and when everything changed to metric, he seemed to learn very quickly how to do exactly the same thing in kilos. I guess if you think like I do, then you tend to judge by looks rather than weight when you're buying any food in a supermarket. But I suppose it is nice to know in this corner of Europe that the two systems still have managed to operate alongside each other so that we of the 'flower power' generation can still buy a pint of milk at the corner shop. (if it still exists!)
Last evening, youngest son held a worship evening to help raise funds for his forthcoming sojourn in Ecuador. It was a great evening of praise and worship but the most delightful memory, apart from some beautiful buns afterwards, was how the old hymns and the modern worship songs he had chosen, sat so easily alongside each other. To sing 'Holy, Holy, Holy' and move into 'How Great is Our God,' shows me clearly once again, that it is not what we sing in worship to our Creator, but the attitude of our hearts. The Psalmist writes 'Praise the LORD. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise Him.' And Paul, in his letter to the church in Ephesus, underlines the importance of our worship by saying, 'Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.' As we worship, let us do so with the words of that old hymn ringing in our ears, 'Tis old yet ever new.' for the message of salvation is never out of date.
