Lift Up Your Hearts!

As a child, I listened to 'way too many repetitions of Tom Lehrer's That Was the Year that Was album; consequently I've lately been afflicted by the following earworm: "So Long, Mom (A Song for WWIII)."

I almost didn't post it—not for reasons of sparing you the earworm, but because the war in the Ukraine is so heartbreaking. And frightening. We pray repeatedly and fervently for the Ukrainian people and their leaders, and for the Russian people and their leaders (because as Christians we don't have the option of praying only for our favorite teams). Not to mention prayers that this not lead to World War III.

But humor has a place in serious situations, and it was a serious situation—the height of the Cold War—when Lehrer wrote the song.

So long, Mom,
I'm off to drop the bomb,
So don't wait up for me.
But while you swelter
Down there in your shelter,
You can see me
On your TV.

While we're attacking frontally,
Watch Brinkally and Huntally,
Describing contrapuntally
The cities we have lost.
No need for you to miss a minute
Of the agonizing holocaust. 

Who, in the 1960's, could have imagined the continuous real time coverage, the drone footage, the uploaded personal cell phone videos, and the satellite photos that make this war so "up close and personal"? Lehrer, now 93 years old, is almost certainly watching it himself. On a color television set.